IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing business processes > Building business state machines

Create a business state machine

To create a new business state machine, follow these instructions.

Procedure

1. In the workbench, switch to the business integration perspective.

2. If you have already created a module, select it in the business integration view.

3. From the main menu, click File > New > Business State Machine.

4. In the New Business State Machine window, specify a module, a folder and a name for the new business state machine. If you want to create a business state machine without an interface, click Finish. Otherwise, click Next.

5. In the Select an Interface window, select an appropriate interface and operation to start the business state machine, and then specify the necessary correlation properties. When you are done, click Finish.

Results

This creates a business state machine, and launches it in a new business state machine editor. Click any of the following links to configure it.

• Business state machine editor
  The business state machine editor is a graphical programming environment that you use to visually create and manipulate business state machines.
• Designing a business state machine
  

  If you are just beginning to design your business state machine, here are some suggestions on how to proceed.

• Adding an interface or a reference to a business state machine
  Interfaces point to the operations that the business state machine accepts and responds to. References define the interfaces that the business state machine uses to invoke other components.
• Adding a variable to a business state machine
  Variables store the data used by a business state machine.
• Adding a state to a business state machine
  A state is one of several discrete individual stages that represent a business transaction. An individual state begins with a waiting period during which it listens to a particular set of events, and it finishes with a reaction that is appropriate to the event that was received.
• Adding an entry or an exit to a state
  An entry is an activity that runs when entering a state; an exit runs when leaving a state.
• Adding a transition to a business state machine
  A transition channels processing from one state to the next by recognizing the triggering event, evaluating the conditions necessary for control to flow through it, and determining what actions can occur should processing be allowed. An event can trigger more than one transition at a time, but only one of those transitions will fire.
• Work with composite states
  A composite state is an aggregate of one or more states. Use one or more of them to decompose a complex business state machine diagram into an easy to comprehend hierarchy of business state machines.
• Defining correlations
  A correlation set defines properties used to distinguish one instance of a business state machine from another within a runtime environment. For each operation (event) that the business state machine responds to, a property alias locates the input that corresponds to each correlation property that is defined.

Building business state machines

Related concepts:
Business state machine editor