Overview of the Example

 

The following sections provide an overview of the WebLogic Process Integrator workflow example:

• Description

• Main Steps

 

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Description

The example presented in this document involves the following workflows:

• Order Processing Workflow

• Start Order Processing Workflow

• ShipBill Workflow

The example workflows interact by way of XML messaging and are supplied with the product on the WebLogic Process Integrator software CD and can be imported into your database. This document describes in detail how to define these workflows and in doing so describes the some of the main functions of WebLogic Process Integrator.

About the Example

The example derives the flow from the confirmation of the order through shipping the item to and billing the customer. The front end handling the order is abstracted for the purpose of this exercise into an XML document, which provides the ordering information to the Order Processing workflow. (In a live situation, the XML document would be generated by a front-end customer application.)

The order process is split into two workflows: Order Processing, which processes the order, and ShipBill, which handles the shipping and billing of the order. The third workflow, Start Order Processing, is a workflow that has been created for this example. Its function is simply to start the order process. For the purposes of this example, the Start Order Processing workflow takes the place of the customer application.

It is important to note that this example could have been implemented as one workflow interaction with explicit calls to application functions through the use of several actions and without necessarily using XML.

Example Workflows

The three workflows are as follows:

• Start Order Processing—this workflow contains a simple task, which creates the XML document, which in turn triggers the Order Processing workflow. In a "real" environment, this information could be captured by a front-end application and the information sent to the Process Integrator process engine through an XML document. In such a situation, a workflow would not simulate an application that sends an XML document representing the Order.

• Order Processing—this workflow takes the order and processes it through a first confirmation, inventory checking, and the completion of the order.

• ShipBill—this workflow handles the shipping and billing of the ordered item, and it is called by the Order Processing workflow. It therefore can be considered a sub-workflow to Order Processing.

The following diagram illustrates the interaction between the workflows defined in this tutorial.

Figure 1-1 Workflow Interaction

 

 

 

Important Terms

Before you get started with this tutorial, it is important to understand the following key terms:

• A workflow is a business process. Workflow automation is the automation of a business process, in whole or in part, during which information of any type is passed to the right participant at the right time according to a set of intelligent business rules that allow computers to perform most of the work while humans only have to deal with exceptions.

• A workflow template is a folder (or a container) in WebLogic Process Integrator Studio. This workflow template represents a workflow and is given a meaningful workflow name, such as Order Processing or Billing. The workflow template aggregates various definitions (or "versions") of its implementation; these are referred to as workflow template definitions. Further, a workflow template is responsible for controlling which organizations can use the "contained" workflow template definitions.

• A workflow template definition is a definition (or "version") of the workflow, distinguished by its Effective and Expiry dates. At run time, WebLogic Process Integrator starts an instance (or session) of a workflow template definition, selecting the most effective (or current and active) definition.

 

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Main Steps

The main steps for defining and running the workflow example are as follows. These steps are described later in this document and in other documents.

1. Define business operations following the instructions provided in Defining Business Operations in Defining the Order Processing Workflow.

   Business operations are stored in the WebLogic Process Integrator database and are not included within the XML definition of the sample workflows provided in this document. The Order Processing and ShipBill workflows use the business operations to call methods on an EJB. If the business operations are not defined within your database, you receive a warning message when importing the workflows; this warning indicates that the system could not find the relevant business operation defined within the workflow template definition.

   The EJB used in this example and on which the defined business operations perform the method calls is POBean. This bean is automatically deployed when you start the WebLogic Process Integrator server.

2. Import the workflow template definitions for Start Order Processing and ShipBill using the procedure described in Importing the Start Order Processing Workflow Template Definition in Defining the Start Order Processing Workflow. The example discussed in this document involves three workflow template definitions, all of which are available in the following directory of the WebLogic Process Integrator CD:

   Drive:/wlprocessintegrator/studio/examples

   or for UNIX:

   \root\studio\examples

   You will follow the instructions provided in this guide to create and define the Order Processing workflow, so you do not need to import this workflow template definition. However, it is possible to import all three example workflows and read this document with the workflows already set up and available in your database.

3. Create three new workflow templates: Order Processing, Start Order Processing, and ShipBill. (See Defining the Order Processing Workflow, Defining the Start Order Processing Workflow, and Defining the ShipBill Workflow: An Exception Handling Example.)

   The order in which you import the three workflows is important. You have to import them in the following order:

   • Start order Processing

   • ShipBill

   • Order Processing

4. Execute the workflows. (See Executing the Workflow Example.)