Oracle Workflow Java Interface
The Oracle Workflow Java interface provides a means for any Java program to integrate with Oracle Workflow. The Oracle Workflow Engine and Notification APIs are accessible through public server PL/SQL packages and published views. The Oracle Workflow Java interface exposes those APIs as Java methods that can be called by any Java program to communicate with Oracle Workflow. The Java methods directly reference the WF_ENGINE and WF_NOTIFICATION PL/SQL package procedures and views and communicate with the Oracle Workflow database through JDBC.
The methods are defined within the EngineAPI class and the NotificationAPI class, in the Java package 'oracle.apps.fnd.wf.engine'. If a Workflow Engine or Notification API has a corresponding Java method, its Java method syntax is displayed immediately after its PL/SQL syntax in the documentation.
Oracle Workflow Context
Each Java method requires an input of a WFContext object that consists of database connectivity information which you instantiate and resource context information that the WFContext class instantiates. To call a Workflow Engine Java API in your Java program, you must first instantiate a database variable of class WFDB with your database username, password and alias. You can also optionally supply a JDBC string. Then you must instantiate wCtx with the database variable.
Sample Java Program
Oracle Workflow provides an example Java program that illustrates how to call most of the Workflow Engine Java APIs. The Java program is named WFTest. It calls the various Java APIs to launch the WFDEMO process, set/get attributes and suspend, resume and abort the process. To initiate this program, make sure you define CLASSPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH for the Oracle JDBC implementation and a supported version of Oracle before running the WFTest java program. For example, on UNIX, use the following commands:
setenv CLASSPATH
<Workflow_JAR_file_directory>/wfapi.jar:${ORACLE_HOME}/jdbc/lib/classes111.zip
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${ORACLE_HOME}/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
Note: If you are using the standalone version of Oracle Workflow with Oracle9i, the Workflow JAR files are located in the <ORACLE_HOME>/jlib directory. If you are using the version of Oracle Workflow embedded in Oracle Applications, the Workflow JAR files are located in the <ORACLE_HOME>/wf/java/oracle/apps/fnd/wf/jar/ directory.
To initiate the WFTEST program, run Java against oracle.apps.fnd.wf.WFTest. For example, on UNIX, enter the following statement on the command line:
$java oracle.apps.fnd.wf.WFTest
See Also
Workflow Engine APIs