Introduction


This preface has the following sections:

• About This Book

• Assumptions

• Conventions Used in This Guide

• For More Information

About This Book

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This book is intended for use by Java programmers who need to extend iPlanet Process Manager 6.0 functionality, either for developing applications or for accessing deployed applications.

There are two main kinds of situations when you might want to use Java when working with Process Manager:

• when developing Process Manager applications

• for interacting with clusters and deployed applications

Developing Process Manager Applications

For many applications, Process Builder allows you to do everything you want to do in the way of building applications to control the flow of processes. You can create process maps that route the flow of control of a process from assignee to assignee. The process can include tasks that are performed manually or automatically, in parallel or sequentially. In many cases, you never need to go outside the Process Builder to build your application.

However, in some cases you may need to tweak applications further. You may want your process to use a data field that is different from any of the built in data fields. You may want to define activities in Java that integrate with external data sources. In these cases, you can create custom data fields and custom activities in Java, and then bring them into the Process Builder to use when building an application.

Relevant chapters are:

• Chapter 1 "Writing Custom Activities," discusses how to write custom activities in Java and bring them into the Process Builder.

• Chapter 2 "Writing Custom Data Fields," discusses how to write custom data fields in Java and bring them into the Process Builder.

• Chapter 3 "Advanced Office Setup Application," discusses a custom data field and custom activity that are provided with the AdvancedOfficeSetup sample application.

Interacting with Clusters and Deployed Applications

The standard way for users to interact with deployed applications is through the Process Express. However, there may be situations when you need to interact programmatically with deployed applications or you want to programmatically perform cluster administration tasks, for example if you want to embed Process Manager functionality inside another application. In this case you can write Java applications that use the Process Manager Engine and Cluster API. In other situations, you might want to write your own front-end to the Process Manager Engine rather than have your users use the Process Express.

Relevant chapters are:

• Chapter 4 "Cluster Management," discusses the classes for programmatically interacting with Process Manager clusters.

• Chapter 5 "Deployment Manager," discusses the classes for programmatically accessing deployment descriptors.

• Chapter 6, "Working with Applications, Process Instances and Work Items," discusses the classes for programmatically interacting with applications, process instances and work items.

Assumptions

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This guide assumes you are familiar with using Process Manager 6.0 and with using the Java language. This guide does not attempt to teach Java.

To get started learning Java, see the online Java Tutorial at:

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

Conventions Used in This Guide

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File and directory paths are given in Windows format (with backslashes separating directory names). For Unix versions, the directory paths are the same, except slashes are used instead of backslashes to separate directories.

This guide uses URLs of the form:

http://server.domain/path/file.html

In these URLs, server is the name of server on which you run your application; domain is your Internet domain name; path is the directory structure on the server; and file is an individual filename. Italic items in URLs are placeholders.

This guide uses the following font conventions:

• The monospace font is used for sample code and code listings, API and language elements (such as function names), file names, path names, directory names, and HTML tags.

• Italic type is used for book titles, emphasis, variables and placeholders, and words used in the literal sense.

For More Information

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Table 0-1 summarizes the tasks involved in using Process Manager and describes where to go for more information about each one.

Table 0-1 Summary of Process Manager Components

Do What?	Which Process Manager Component?	Comments
Install Process Manager	Installation component	For more information about installing Process Manager, see the Process Manager Installation Guide
Build a process application	Process Builder	The Builder is a graphical user interface for building processes. For more information about Process Builder, see the Process Manager Builder's Guide.
Perform the steps in a process	Process Express	The Express is a web-based interface that is used by the people who perform tasks in a process. It includes a customized work list for each person as well as a web-based form for each task. For more information about Process Express, see the Process Express User's Guide.
Administer a process application	Process Administrator and Business Administrator	This is a set of web-based interface for doing administration tasks such as shutting down processes. For more information, see the Administrator's and Business Manager's Guide.
Build Java custom data fields and activities in Java. Also use the Java API to programmatically interact with Process Manager.	Process Manager Java classes and API which are available in a JAR file.	Java programmers can build custom data fields and custom activies in Java that can be imported into the Process Builder. Programmers can also create Java applications that embed Process Manager functionality or present customized front ends to Process Manager. For more information, read this book.
Use the Application or Cluster APIs.	Java API components	see the javadocs, which can be found in the support\sdk\docs directory of the Process Manager Builder installation.

Process Manager 6.0 runs on top of iPlanet Application Server 6.0 (iAS 6.0). For more information about iAS 6.0 and other iPlanet products, see the iPlanet documentation web site at http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/.