Contents
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| iPlanet Process Manager, Version 6.5 Programmer's Guide |
PrefaceAbout This Manual
This manual, iPlanet Process Manager Programmer's Guide, is intended for programmers who want to extend iPlanet™ Process Manager functionality, either for developing Process Manager applications or for interacting with clusters and deployed applications.
This manual assumes you are familiar with using Process Manager and with using the Java language. This manual does not attempt to teach Java.
To get started learning Java, see the online Java Tutorial at:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
Developing iPlanet Process Manager Applications
For many applications, Process Builder allows flexibility when 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. You can also create web services clients that access Process Manager applications using the iPM Web Services API.
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.
- Chapter 7, "Web Services," discusses how to create Apache SOAP clients and WSDL SOAP clients that can access web services exposed by Process Manager applications.
Conventions Used in This Manual
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.
Viewing Documentation
For your convenience, iPlanet Process Manager manuals are provided in both PDF and HTML formats. You can access the documentation from the Help menu of each Process Manager component. You can access context-sensitive documentation by clicking a Help button or link in each Process Manager component.
The location of the documentation in your distribution is at:
iPM_Install_Dir/builder/manual
The documentation is also available at the Sun documentation web site:
For More Information
Table 1 summarizes the tasks involved in using Process Manager and describes where to go for more information about each one.
Note Process Manager runs on top of iPlanet Application Server (iAS). For more information about iAS and other iPlanet products, see the Sun documentation web site at http://docs.sun.com/.
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