 | Level: Introductory Sherri Wayne (swayne@us.ibm.com), Software Engineer,
IBM
20 Dec 2006 This article focuses on the exciting new features in IBM WebSphere
Process Server V6.0.2 and IBM WebSphere Integration Developer V6.0.2.
Enhancements have been made in several key areas such as integration,
qualities of service, performance, dynamicity, platform integration, and ease of use.
New functionality has been added to service components including business process
management, human tasks, and business rules, mediation flows, and relationships.
Introduction
IBM® WebSphere® Process Server (hereafter known as Process Server) is designed to
transform your business processes and enable integration of your applications and services
based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) model. This single, process-automation server
with integrated service bus uses open standards-based technology to integrate business
processes with a unified programming model that spans people, workflows, applications,
systems, platforms, and architectures.
IBM WebSphere Integration Developer (hereafter known as Integration Developer) is
the premier component-authoring tool used to create robust enterprise-wide SOA solutions
that run on Process Server. Integration Developer uses business-driven design principles
to discover, build, and integrate components based on the
Service Component Architecture (SCA).
Figure 1. Shows where Process Server and Integration Developer fit in a process-centric
approach to SOA, helping you achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness by developing and implementing
innovative business models.
Figure 1. Enabling the complete SOA lifecycle of business processes
Before reading this article, it would be helpful to have a basic understanding of the capabilities
provided in V6.0.1.x of WebSphere Process Server
and WebSphere Integration Developer.
Important: WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer V6.0.2 planned availability
for electronic format is 22 December 2006. See the product announcement
for more details. WebSphere Process Server for z/OS V6.0.2 planned availability is 30 March 2006. See the product announcement for more details.
A walk through the new features of Process Server and Integration Developer V6.0.2
Now, let's take a walk through the new features. The following is a high-level overview of the
new capabilities and features in V6.0.2 that enrich and evolve the products. Many of these enhancements are
a direct result of customer feedback and support the following themes:
- New integration capabilities
- Quality of service improvements
- Dynamicity and ease of use
- Improved enterprise service bus integration
- New platform integration
- Enhancements to additional components
- Improved performance through optimization of code paths and other enhancements
New integration capabilities
Experience simplified configuration and improved performance when connecting to IBM WebSphere
MQ (WMQ) or IBM WebSphere Message Broker (hereafter known as Message Broker) via new SCA import and export bindings.
- New native WMQ binding provides easier and faster integration with WMQ and Message Broker.
Messages are presented in a manner familiar to WMQ application programmers and administrators, and to
Message Broker users. A framework for data bindings, tailored to WMQ conventions, is provided to allow
mapping between SCA messages and WMQ message headers and bodies. Imports and exports can be
configured to support a range of common WMQ request/reply correlation techniques.
- New WMQ Java™ Message Service (JMS) binding extends WMQ assets as part of your process
server applications by using WMQ as the JMS provider.
Integrate more easily with WMQ and Message Broker advanced messaging networks by leveraging the new
JMS import and export bindings and new JMSType function selector. Reduce or eliminate the need to write custom
code by using the built-in support.
- New JMS import and export bindings now support additional JMS message types via supplied data binding
classes. Built-in support is included for TextMessage, BytesMessage, ObjectMessage, StreamMessage,
MapMessage, and the Message JMS message types.
- New function selector which uses the JMSType property in the message header to select the operation
name allows for more efficient message routing and message replacement without requiring any message
payload manipulation.
Increase productivity by more easily integrating with Java and J2EE infrastructures using automatically
generated helper components.
- Improved Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) and Java consumption. A helper component bridging the invocation
of a Java-typed interface from a component referencing a WSDL-typed interface, is automatically generated
when an EJB or Java class is dropped on the Integration Developer assembly editor.
If your integration needs require the development of custom data bindings (datahandler support) for
converting commonly used data streams into business objects and vice versa, get a jump start by reviewing
two new samples that provide documentation and implementation source code demonstrating this support.
- New custom Enterprise Information System (EIS) and JMS data bindings samples are provided
showing how custom data bindings for commonly used formats of fixed width, delimited, and name
value pairs can be easily integrated with Process Server.
Quality of service improvements
Process Server Version 6.0.2 builds on the already robust qualities of service provided by
Version 6.0.1 as well as by the underlying WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment by
adding improvements in the following areas:
- New event sequencing functionality allows you to preserve the processing sequence of events
in which they were remotely generated. This ensures events are processed in the intended order.
- Further support has been added in the area of clustering and federation of servers allowing for
additional Network Deployment topologies.
Improved administration and dynamic enablement
New features are provided which allow for enhanced administrative ease of use and dynamic service
consumability. These improvements empower administrators with additional capabilities needed in
today's complex business environment.
- Dynamic endpoint administration allows administrators to react to changing business needs by
enabling dynamic reconfiguration of service endpoints. Direct support provided in the administrative
console provides the capability to administer, manage, and change the endpoint of a Web services
import without having to rebuild or redeploy the application.
- Dynamic endpoint selection can be made by changing endpoints programmatically based on
predetermined parameters such as a value contained in a message or by looking up an endpoint
definition from IBM WebSphere Service Registry and Repository.
- Administrators can dynamically change the behavior of a running mediation.
- Guided activities provided in the administrative console allow for simplified configuration of
network topologies consisting of clusters and multiple cells.
- The installation of Process Server now provides a new client installation option.
Additional platform integration
Additional platform integration capabilities further establish Process Server and Integration Developer
as an SOA platform leader by offering total solution support.
- Integration with WebSphere Service Registry and Repository delivers end-to-end governance for
all services, dynamically discovering services and service metadata information at runtime. The
ability to find and import services and service metadata, as well as publish newly created services at
authoring time is provided via support in Integration Developer.
- Incorporating IBM's Information Server via the new service activity enables tight integration
between information services and business processes.
- Improvements in integration with Tivoli monitoring functionality, including performance monitoring
infrastructure (PMI), application response monitor (ARM) and support for the Tivoli ITCAM Suite of
products, allow for more advanced IT-level monitoring scenarios that cover service issues critical to
your business.
Improved Enterprise Service Bus
mediations
Process Server Version 6.0.2, with its integrated enterprise service bus, includes new features
and pre-built mediations which increase business flexibility and responsiveness, enhance usability,
provide for business activity monitoring, and save you time and development costs.
- The new endpoint lookup primitive provides integration with WebSphere Service Registry and
Repository and, along with the new dynamic endpoint selection functionality, allows for runtime selection
of a service endpoint. Numerous criteria can be used for selection, including metadata retrieved from
the registry and repository. The capabilities provided by the registry and repository for service selection
enable innovative, new dynamic application scenarios.
- The new event emitter primitive provides an easy to use, flexible way to generate a Common Base
Event (CBE) in a mediation flow. This new primitive eliminates the need to write custom Java code
and allows for notification and reporting of significant events within a mediation flow. This functionality
is fully integrated with Common Event Infrastructure (CEI) which means generated events can be written
to the event database and used by monitoring applications such as the CBE Browser or WebSphere
Business Monitor.
- The new message element setter primitive provides an easy way to change data in a mediation flow
and update the message without having to write custom code or define XSL transformations. Updates
are performed in-place.
- New unmodeled fault support allows for the capability for all faults from a service invocation to be
handled in a defined manner, including unmodeled faults. This support provides for improved error
handling in a more consistent way.
Human-centric task enhancements
Several enhancements have been made in the area of human-centric functionality for better management,
flexibility, and efficiency. New ad-hoc capabilities such as subtasks and follow-on tasks enable delegation
and work subdivision scenarios in the area of collaboration between humans. New functionality for creating
customized clients has also been added.
The following provides a summary of these enhancements.
- Enhanced support for groups allows for work to now be assigned to a specific group where any
member of that group can claim it. It also provides for a work-queue based working style, where an
administrator can transfer work items among groups. This support allows for efficient handling of large
groups.
- Support for human ad-hoc collaboration includes subtasks and follow-on tasks. A subtask is used
when the owner of the parent task creates subtasks engaging the assistance of colleagues, yet still
retains responsibility for work completion. A follow-on task is used when the owner delegates unfinished
work to a colleague and the owner of the new follow-on task becomes responsible for completion of the
task.
- Follow-up support allows the owner to put work aside for a certain amount of time, removing it from the
work list, to then return later at the specified time.
- Server controlled page flow provides for conceptually chaining a series of inline human tasks in a
business process.
- Post-processing of staff query results allows the staff query result set (individuals and groups to be
assigned to tasks) to be modified for more complex staff resolution.
- Customizable e-mail notification for escalations supports the ability to now specify a subject and
body, add runtime context through use of context variables, and determine recipients by staff resolution.
- Binary custom properties support allows for the attaching of arbitrary binary values; for example,
an audio recording or scanned image, to a human task on the fly, using key-value pair semantics.
- A wizard-based Web client generation tool provides a good starting point for creating customized
clients interacting with human workflows.
Business process management
enhancements
Improvements have also been made to the business process management support enabling you with
more dynamic, customizable capabilities to create and run your critical business processes.
Highlights include enhanced query support, dynamic invocation of sub-processes, extended API support,
BPC Explorer and BPC Observer enhancements, as well as improved client capabilities offering new remote
client support and a generic Web services interface.
The following provides a summary of these enhancements:
- Queries using process variables allow for the retrieval and filtering of a list of business processes
based on business data; for example, retrieve process instances related to a specific customer,
John Doe. This allows for the retrieval of more meaningful business data and for the support of
additional scenarios.
- A new Information Service activity provides for direct interaction with the IBM Information Server platform
adding new data retrieval scenarios.
- Dynamic invocation of a sub-process based on its template name gives additional flexibility. The
sub-process partner link may be set in a Java snippet or in an assign statement.
- Extended application programming interface (API) support for custom properties allows for the
retrieval of custom properties of a process template, creation of queries based on custom properties,
and the set and get of custom properties for an activity instance.
- The BPC Explorer has been enhanced to provide a graphical view of processes, both template and
instance. Actions supported include zoom and scroll, expand and collapse, and navigation to an activity
details view. Custom views can now be based on search definitions.
- The BPC Observer has improved operational management capabilities by providing a graphical view
of operational data. It allows for observation of state and the evolution of processes, provides customizable
reports and graphical charts, and supports flexible drill-down to retrieve statistical data on processes and
activities. Previously, it was delivered as a sample, but it is now delivered and supported as part of the product.
- Enhanced client support provides increased accessibility for remote clients, as well as support for clients
capable of invoking Web services through a new generic Web services interface.
Enhancements to additional components
New capabilities have been added to additional components, including business rules, business state
machines, and the relationship service.
Lower your development time and cost by taking advantage of the simplified business rules programming
model. Experience simplified administration and monitoring as a result of the new rules audit capabilities.
- Business rules enhancements include design time, runtime, and operational improvements.
There is now support for the more common business rule logic scenarios, including specifying initialization
logic for a decision table, "otherwise" clause on decision table conditions, use of "return" option in rule sets, and a "copyBusinessObject" function for ruleset actions. Improved visibility to business rule changes allows for new audit capabilities. You can record what changes were made and who made those changes in the SystemOut.log or in a separately specified log. New business rule import / export capability simplifies the process of maintaining consistency between test and production environment instances.
Take advantage of the support for additional usage patterns and the improved administration and ease of
use enhancements available for business state machines.
- Business state machine enhancements include new support that allows you to use part of the response
message as the correlation id, instead of having to supply the value from the caller as in previous versions.
You can now query business state machine variables including the display name of the current state as well
as correlation set information. The BPC Explorer now has support for business state machines by providing
predefined views of the templates and process instances.
Improvements to the relationship service and the relationship manager provide for a better over-all user
experience, including improved performance.
- Relationship service enhancements include client-side cursor support which provides improved
performance for queries. The relationship manager, used to view and manage relationship runtime data,
has also received improvements in cursor and pagination support as well as in the ability to view multiple roles in the same administrative panel.
WebSphere Integration Developer V6.0.2
features
In addition to providing comprehensive, business-driven development support for the new features and
enhancements discussed so far, Integration Developer V6.0.2 also adds the following new features.
In the area of integration:
- Improved business activity monitoring available through new integration with WebSphere Business Monitor.
Integration Developer allows for monitor model development using the new monitor development toolkit.
The toolkit provides an integrated development environment via the business monitoring perspective which
consists of a monitor model editor and monitor model editor documents. It also provides an integrated test
environment consisting of a monitor test server and a simplified Web-based dashboard.
- WSDL and XSD integration, usage, and compatibility improvements.
- Enterprise service discovery wizard lets you find and import artifacts from WebSphere Registry and Repository.
- Industry schemas for data models including industry-defined and client-defined patterns: Microsoft
Web Services, synchronization with Rational Application Developer, Web services interoperability.
- Enhanced wizard-driven development enabling top-down creation of Java Web services that can run on servers other than Process Server.
- Improved integration with Rational RequisitePro® allows information technology (IT) to be more
closely aligned with business by helping IT better understand and track the business requirements. Integration
Developer provides a RequisitePro requirement view so that a process component may be linked to a
requirement managed by RequisitePro.
- Ability to interact with WebSphere MQ Workflow User-Defined Program Execution Server (UPES)
application programs.
Further new features are included in the following areas:
- Faster authoring of BPM solutions and easier integration to external services
- Wizards and property settings to enable the dynamic modification capabilities of services and mediations.
- Increased performance through build and validation improvements.
- Decrease in memory consumption reduces the memory footprint.
- Enhanced refactoring support for rename, change namespace, move, and extract (embedded XSDs,
WSDLs) reduces the complexity to resolve errors and dependencies. Dependencies are examined,
and appropriate changes are then made to dependent artifacts.
- WebSphere technology adapters are included for development and production use, and WebSphere
application adapters are included for development use. Reduce your EIS integration development time by
taking advantage of this new packaging of the adapters with Integration Developer.
- Create custom CBE events with the new event definition editor. Events can be used in visual Java
snippets, the business measure editor, and in Java code.
- Visual snippets support has been improved by providing new categories of visual snippets, including
converter and numbers; as well as by providing more visual snippets within a category. Smaller Java files
sizes are generated from visual snippets which reduce the workspace size and build time.
- User changes to Web services security information in the EJB deployment descriptor via the module
deployment editor are now preserved. Rebuilds will not corrupt nor overwrite the Web services security
information.
- Custom mediation primitives can now be constructed through logic in an SCA Java component or
through logic in a visual or Java snippet defined as a property of the primitive. A separate SCA
Java component is no longer required. Shared custom visual snippets can be used in custom mediation
primitives. Development is easier and more productive.
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Conclusion
Version 6.0.2 of WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Integration Developer
provide many key enhancements that evolve and mature the platform allowing you to implement new,
innovative business scenarios in application, business, and process integration. In this article, you learned
about new features in areas of integration, qualities of service, performance, dynamicity, platform integration,
and ease of use. Process Server and Integration Developer provide you with the leading SOA platform of
choice for service mediation and orchestration.
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About the author | | | Sherri Wayne is a software engineer with the IBM Software Group. She is part of the Worldwide WebSphere Process Integration Technical Sales team. You can reach SHERRI at swayne@us.ibm.com. swayne@us.ibm.com. |
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