Application Development for IBM WebSphere Process Server 7 and Enterprise Service Bus 7

By Salil Ahuja and Swami Chandrasekaran

This book covers building an application using the principles of BPM and SOA, using WPS and WESB. The various detailed aspects, features, and capabilities of the product are conveyed though examples. It also provides pragmatic guidance on various aspects in relation to building the SOA application. Every section has solutions to common problems and pitfalls. This book is for SOA architects, designers, and developers who have a basic understanding of SOA concepts and would like to learn more about building solutions and applications using IBM WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Jul 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781847198297

Book preview

Table of Contents

Application Development for IBM WebSphere Process Server 7 and Enterprise Service Bus 7

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Introducing IBM BPM and ESB

What is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

Process, Business Services, and Components—the core constructs

Achieving success through BPM enabled by SOA

Business Process Management (BPM)

Building blocks of BPM enabled by SOA framework

Business Process Modeling

Business Process Execution (including Choreography)

Enterprise Service Bus

Business Policies and Rules

Business Process Monitoring

Information Model

IBM SOA Reference Architecture

What is Reference Architecture?

Key elements of IBM SOA Reference Architecture

Introducing IBM WebSphere Process Server (WPS)

Role of WPS in SOA

Platform architecture

Common BPM adoption scenarios

Introducing IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB)

Role of WESB in SOA

Platform architecture

Common WESB usage scenarios

Interaction patterns

Mediation patterns

Deployment patterns

WESB selection checklist

IBM's SOA Foundation lifecycle

IBM's BPM enabled by SOA method

Summary

2. Installing the Development Environment

WebSphere Integration Developer overview

Prerequisite configuration

Installing WID on Windows

IBM Installation Manager

Starting the Installation

Setting up UTE

WPS and WESB Integrated test environment

Verifying the installation

Post installation activities

Uninstalling WID

Getting Started with WID

Starting WID

Business Integration perspective

Available views

Working with Modules and Libraries

Solution diagram

Assembly Diagram

Palette

Imports and Exports

References and wires

Dependency editor

Words of wisdom — tips, tricks, suggestions, and pitfalls

Summary

3. Building your Hello Process Project

SOA programming model

Web Services Description Language (WSDL) in a minute

XML Schema Definition (XSD) in a minute

Service Component Architecture (SCA)

Defining SCA

Service Component Definition Language

Service Data Objects (SDO)

Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL)

WID and WS-BPEL

Building your first business process

Creating the Integration Solution

Creating library project

Creating and visualizing Business Objects

Creating and visualizing interfaces

Creating the Hello Process BPEL

Creating a new module called HelloProcess

Creating a business process component HelloProcess

Implementing the HelloProcess process

Testing modules and components

Deploying the modules

Executing the modules

Logging and troubleshooting

Words of wisdom — tips, tricks, suggestions, and pitfalls

Summary

4. Building Your Hello Mediation Project

WS standards

What are mediation flows?

Mediation primitives

Service Message Objects (SMO)

Creating mediation modules

Creating the Hello Mediation Flow

Implementing the HelloMediationModule

Testing modules and components

Deploying the modules

Executing the modules

Summary

5. Business Process Choreography Fundamentals

Using WPS in the right scenarios

Creating service contracts with interface editor

Development approach with WID

Lingua Franca for BPM — Business Objects

Working with Business Process (WS-BPEL)

Long-running processes and microflows

Using control structures in your processes

Invoke external services using Invoke activity

Data mapping using Business Object Maps

Exception handling in Business Processes

SCA exception types

Compensation

Catch, Catch All, Throw, Rethrow, and Terminate

Exception handling suggested practices

Failed Event Manager

Relationships

Using Visual Snippets

Handling human tasks

Using rule groups and rules

Business rules

Business rule sets and templates

Decision tables

Words of wisdom — tips, tricks, suggestions, and pitfalls

Summary

6. Mediations Fundamentals

Mediation flows

Service Message Object (SMO)

Working with Mediation primitives

Mediation primitive overview

Implementation steps common to most Mediation primitives

Service invocation

Callout

Properties

Example — Callout

Usage tips

Service invoke

Key use

Properties

Usage tips

Routing primitive

Message filter

Key uses

Example – Message Filter primitive

Test and execution

Usage tips

Endpoint lookup

Key uses

Properties

Usage tips

Flow Order

Properties

Usage tips

Fan Out

Key use

Implementation steps

Properties

Usage tips

Fan In

Key uses

Implementation steps

Properties

Usage tips

Transformation primitives

Message element setter

Key use

Properties

Usage tips

Database Lookup

Key uses

Implementation steps

Example — Database Lookup primitive

Custom Mediation

Key use

Example — Custom Mediation

Usage tips

XSL Transformation primitive

Key use

Example — XSL Transformation primitive

Usage tips

Tracing primitives

Message Logger

Key use

Implementation steps

Usage tips

Example — Message Logger primitive

Error Handling — Stop/Fail

Key use

Implementation steps

Usage tips

Dynamic routing

What is the need for dynamic routing or endpoint selection?

Integration with external systems using adapters

What are adapters?

How different are the adapters when compared to mediation flows?

What are these WebSphere Adapters?

What types of adapter come out-of-the-box with WPS/WESB?

Summary

7. Sales Fulfillment Application for JungleSea Inc.

Business requirements

Business goals

IT goals

IT requirements

Existing JungleSea Inc. applications

Customer Information Management

Order Entry

Product Catalog Management

Customer Billing Management

Order Management

Shipping Management

Inventory Management

Customer Credit Management

Supplier / Partner Management

SOA considerations

Applying the SOA Foundation Lifecycle

Architecture and design

System context

Identified use cases and scenarios

Actors

Use cases

Identified Business Processes

Solution Architecture

Service identification

Service granularity

Top-Down, Bottom-up, and Goal-Oriented Decomposition Analysis

Categorized (Business) Service Portfolio

Identified components and services

Architectural decisions and design patterns applied

Laying out the build plan

Identifying WPS and WESB parts

Summary

8. Walk the Talk

Shared libraries

Business Doman Libraries

Creating the Common Domain library

BillingDomain-v1_0

CustomerDomain-v1_0

ProductDomain-v1_0

SupplierPartner-v1_0

End Application libraries

Visualizing the solution

Process Services

Process Service — Order Handling

Process Service — Order Handling components

Process Service — CustomerInterfaceManagement

Process Service — CustomerInterfaceManagement components

Business Services and Access Services

Business Services for TrackAndManageCustomerOrder component

Business Service — ProductCatalogMgmt

Business Service — InventoryManagement

Business Service — CustomerCreditManagement

Business Service — SupplierPartnerManagement

Business Service — CustomerBillingManagement

Business Service — ShippingManagement

Business Service — CustomerOrderManagement

Business Service — CustomerInformationManagement

Summary

9. Building the Order Handling Processes

Module assembly

Steps involved in building business process

Building ProcessServices-CustomerInterfaceManagement

Implementing HandleCustomerContactProfile business process component

Importing application libraries and modules/simulators

Creating and importing JungleSea domain libraries

Creating and/or importing necessary dependent modules

Creating ProcessServices-CustomerInterfaceManagement module

Module assembly and wiring

Implementing HandleCustomerContactProfile BPEL component

Implementing Fault Handling

Testing the business process

Building ProcessServices-OrderHandling

Implementing TrackAndManageCustomerOrder business process component

Creating and/or importing necessary dependent modules

Module Assembly and Wiring

Implementing the business process component

Implementing Fault Handling

Testing the Business Process

Correlation sets in BPEL processes

Anatomy of a correlation set

Using a correlation set

Summary

10. Integration with Various Applications

Patterns addressed

Module assembly

Testing the modules

Key concepts

Test configurations

Emulators

Monitors

Events

Unit testing

Component testing

Implementing Business Service and Access Service modules

Building BizServices-ShippingMgmt module

Implement the Business Service component

Building AccessServices-Rapid module

Creating the Access Service module

Implementing adapters

Access Service module assembly and wiring

Implementing Mediation Flows

Unit Testing the Mediation Flows

Wiring Business Services and Access Services

Testing the Business Service end-to-end

Building BizServices-CustomerCreditMgmt module

Building AccessServices-Equal module

Create Access Service module

Access Service module assembly and wiring

Implementing Mediation Flows

Testing the Mediation Flows

Wiring to Business Services and Access Services

Building BizServices-SupplierPartnerMgmt module

Building AccessServices-Moonlight module

Create the Access Service module

Implement JDBC adapter

Building BizServices-InventoryMgmt module

Building AccessServices-Alpha module

Creating the Access Service module

Access Service module assembly and wiring

Implement the Mediation module

Testing the Business Service end-to-end

Building BizServices-CustomerBillingMgmt module

Building BizServices-CustomerInfoMgmt module

Summary

11. Business Space

What is Business Space?

Business Spaces

Launching Business Space

Creating a Business Space

Creating a Business Space template

Sharing a Business Space

Widgets

Adding widgets to Business Space

Summary

12. Deployment Topologies

Deployment topology considerations

WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment fundamentals

Cells

Nodes

Deployment manager

Profiles

Clusters

Bus

Databases

Vertical clustering

Horizontal clustering

SCA components and cluster

Operational architecture

Infrastructure requirements

Logical operational architecture

Physical architecture

Sales Fulfillment Application deployment topology

Words of Wisdom

Summary

13. Management, Monitoring, and Security

Solution administration tasks

Using the administrative console

Performing common tasks using the administrative console

Enabling server and application security

Administrative Security procedures — Enabling administration security at profile creation

Installing SCA modules using the admin console

Managing Users and Groups

Integration with LDAP

Configuring Resources

Troubleshooting and Problem Determination

Administration tasks using Business Space

Installing versioned SCA modules

Monitoring WPS/WESB applications

Tools and capabilities provided

Monitoring with BPC Explorer

Configuring BPC Explorer

Service Monitoring with Business Space

Monitoring with Problem Determination Space

Common Event Infrastructure (CEI) and CBE Browser

Words of wisdom — tips, tricks, suggestions, and pitfalls

Summary

A. WID, WPS, and WESB Tips, Tricks, and Pointers

Any suggested method to backup WID?

Restoring a profile from a backup

Increasing WID's heap size

How to add projects and libraries as dependencies in WID?

How to reset a profile within WID?

How to change the level of Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) compliance?

How to change the type of your business process?

How to get the list of ports the server uses for connections?

Various tools and associated URLs that we should be aware of and bookmark

Checking the version of the WPS or WESB server

How to list all defined profiles on a WPS server?

What is the difference between backing up admin configuration and profile backup?

The administrator user ID and password to log in to the administrative console

The recommended WPS deployment topology

Turning off IBM-specific BPEL Extension

Deploying modules with libraries by reference

How to create versioned modules and libraries?

Exporting a versioned SCA Module from WID for server deployment

Some considerations or practices to adopt when dealing with versioned modules

Recommended practices when working in a team environment or when performing team programming

Performing team programming with CVS

Stopping and starting process templates with the admin console

tranLog

Enabling and disabling Cross-Component Trace settings

Use of global variables in a forEach within a BPEL process

Enabling event monitoring in WID

Using DynaCache to improve the performance of your WPS or WESB solution?

What is the difference between Shared context, Correlation context, and Transient context? When to use which?

What is WID history logging?

WID Tracing

BPEL or Mediation Flows — which and when to choose?

Some common business process implementation types and when to use them

Seeing WPS data in a Derby DB

Miscellaneous Snippet Topics

Overriding a Web Service endpoint in a mediation flow

What is deferred parsing in the context of WESB?

Some performance tips and considerations

The difference between testing a module and testing a component

What are the best forums to get help in WID, WPS, and WESB?

Where can I listen or read up on advanced presentations and Webcasts?

What are some useful pointers to articles, IBM redbooks, and other sources for advanced topics related to WID, WPS, and WESB?

Index

Application Development for IBM WebSphere Process Server 7 and Enterprise Service Bus 7

Swaminathan Chandrasekaran

Salil Ahuja

---

Application Development for IBM WebSphere Process Server 7 and Enterprise Service Bus 7

Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: July 2010

Production Reference: 1010710

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-847198-28-0

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Tina Negus (<[e-mail]>)

Credits

Authors

Swami Chandrasekaran

Salil Ahuja

Reviewers

Xinyu Liu

Steve Robinson

Prabu Swamidurai

Acquisition Editor

Sarah Cullington

Development Editors

Dhwani Devater

Reshma Sundaresan

Technical Editors

Alfred John

Neha Mallik

Copy Editor

Leonard D'Silva

Editorial Team Leader

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Project Team Leader

Lata Basantani

Project Coordinator

Poorvi Nair

Proofreader

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Indexer

Monica Ajmera Mehta

Production Coordinator

Alwin Roy

Cover Work

Alwin Roy

About the Authors

Swami Chandrasekaran works for IBM as an Industry Executive Architect for its Software Group—Industry Solutions. He provides architectural leadership for IBM tooling / product suite and works with its global customers in delivery of best in class solutions. His expertise includes next-generation networks, OSS/BSS, SOA, Dynamic BPM and modern web-based architectures, and TM Forum Frameworx (NGOSS). He has travelled to almost 24 countries and is constantly sought after within the company for his technical leadership and client skills. His credits include technical and strategic interface with various senior executive and institutions, including Fortune 100/500 companies and international clients. He is the SME and Co-Lead Architect for the WebSphere Telecom Content Pack.

He has presented at several conferences, authored articles within IBM, articles featured in BearingPoint Institute for Thought Leadership, and also holds several patent disclosures. He previously worked for BearingPoint and also for Ericsson Wireless Research. He lives with his wife Ramya and daughter Harshitha in Dallas, Texas. He is an avid video gamer and during his free time he likes to write at http://www.nirvacana.com. He holds a Master's in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas, Arlington.

There are many people whom I would like to thank. I thank my IBM management team for encouraging and allowing me the time needed to write this book. I'd like to thank all my mentors and my family members including my in-laws who have helped and guided me over the last several years. I'd like to thank the staff at Packt Publishing, including Poorvi Nair, Sarah Cullington, Reshma Sundaresan, and Dhwani Devater for their assistance in this effort. Finally and most importantly, I thank my wife, Ramya and daughter, Harshitha for encouraging me to take this immensely challenging journey and for all the weekends and time they have sacrificed so that this book could become a reality.

I dedicate this book to my parents, my Gurus, and Ramya.

Salil Ahuja currently works for IBM as a Technical Lead in their AIM Customer Programs group. He has been working in the IT industry for over eight years in a variety of positions ranging from development to client services. As a certified IBM SOA Designer, he has spent the majority of his career consulting with large healthcare players on the design, implementation, and delivery of standards-based enterprise SOA solutions. In his current role, he works with premium IBM clients to educate and enable them on the leading edge technologies within the IBM Business Process Management portfolio. Salil is a sought after expert on HIPAA and Health Level 7 Clinical Data Architecture, and has presented to various IBM labs on healthcare information exchange in the provider payer space.

He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife Priyanka. In his spare time he enjoys the outdoors, theater, and playing or watching basketball whenever possible. He can be contacted on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/salil-ahuja/0/b92/186.

This book is a result of a collaborative effort and I would like to acknowledge those who helped make it possible. First, I thank IBM management for approving the undertaking of this book project and Packt publishing for helping materialize the book. Also, I would like to extend thanks to my co-author, Swami Chandrasekaran, for bringing this opportunity to me. We worked countless hours to make this book a reality. I could not have completed this book without the continuous support from my mentors, friends, and family - thank you to all of you. Specifically, I would like to thank my parents, Sudha and Suvir, and my brother, Nitin, for their constant support and encouragement that allows me to continuously take on new challenges like this. And lastly, a very special thanks to my wife Priyanka - thank you for your encouragement, understanding, and patience that gave me the space and enviroment that allowed me to write this book.

I dedicate this book to my parents - Sudha and Suvir, who have always put my needs before theirs and laid the foundation for the life that I have built.

About the Reviewers

Xinyu Liu had his graduate educations at the George Washington University. As a Sun Microsystems certified enterprise architect, he has intensive application design and development experience on JavaEE, JavaSE, and JavaME platforms.

He works in a healthcare company as a key technical contributor in its IT department. During his years of service, new application design and implementation methodologies and strategies were established under his effort. He also leads the effort to transition to a Portal, BPM, SOA-oriented architecture, in addition to the setting up of an enterprise-wide knowledge repository based on Drools rule engine and a content management system on top of Alfresco.

He is a writer for Java.net and Javaworld.com on different topics, including JSF, Spring Security, Hibernate Search, Spring Web Flow, and the new Servlet 3.0 specification.

He also worked on the review of the books Spring Web Flow 2 Web Development and Grails 1.1 Web Application Development, both by Packt Publishing.

Special thanks to my son, Gavin Liu and my wife, Xiaowen Zhou.

Steve Robinson is currently employed as Chief Technology Officer for a Boutique management consultancy in London. Previously, he was an international WebSphere consultant and he has been a consultant for both IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft.NET technologies. Steve has been working in IT for over 15 years and has provided solutions for many large-enterprise corporations worldwide including IBM, Lloyds Banking Group, BSkyB, and PricewaterhouseCoopers in both the middleware and Internet technology space. He recently published a book entitled WebSphere Application Server 7.0 Administration Guide. Steve also runs and supports http://www.webspheretools.com, a very popular knowledge site dedicated to WebSphere and related tools.

Prabu Swamidurai is a WebSphere consultant specializing in large scale WebSphere implementations in the Big 4 Banks and financial and retail industries in the UK. He has worked in Fortune 500 companies in the Europe and the Middle East region for the past 12 years, focusing on IBM WebSphere technologies.

Prabu is certified in several IBM products including WebSphere Application Server, Process Server, ESB, DataPower, MQ, and Message Broker. He has a unique reputation for creating and implementing highly-sophisticated automated build and deployment tools for these products and technologies with his clients. He has a Master's degree in Physics and Computer Science.

He can be contacted via his web portal www.webspherespcialist.com.

I would like to thank my loving wife Latha; without you I would not be the person I am today. I also dedicate this book to my children Alwin and Ajeet who in their own unique ways gave me encouragement, enjoyment, and delight throughout the review of this book. I also would like to thank my mother (Jeya) for her dedication, love, and support.

Preface

By adopting an SOA approach in Business Process Management (BPM), you can make your application flexible, reusable, and adaptable to new developments. This book introduces basic concepts of Business Integration, SOA Fundamentals, and SOA Programming Model, and implements them in numerous examples.

You will learn to analyze business requirements and rationalize your thoughts to see if an SOA approach is appropriate for your project. Using the principles of Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture, using IBM WebSphere Process Server 7(WPS), and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus 7 (WESB), the authors guide you through building an Order Management application from scratch.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing IBM BPM and ESB, discusses the core capabilities needed for a process integration approach, IBM’s SOA Reference Architecture, and IBM’s Business Process Management platform including WebSphere Process Server (WPS) and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus. It also discusses IBM’s BPM enabled by SOA lifecycle methodology.

Chapter 2, Installing the Development Environment, takes you through the process of installing and setting up the WID development environment. During the course of setting up the environment, it takes a quick peek into some of the fundamentals of WID, key concepts, and terms. It takes us through a crash course in using WID and also shows us how to navigate using WID as well as some of the key activities that one would perform and how to perform them.

Chapter 3, Building your Hello Process Project, discusses the fundamental SOA programming model concepts and helps us understand how these concepts apply in the context of WID/WPS/WESB. It also discusses, in detail, the Service Component Architecture (SCA). It also rounds up the SOA programming model discussions with BPEL. It also provides instructions on building our first business process-based application—Greeting Solution. Though the application does a simple job, the purpose of building this application is to understand how to go about using WID, the various capabilities of WID, and how to apply these capabilities. It also briefly touches upon logging, debugging, and troubleshooting basics and exporting projects from WID.

Chapter 4, Building your Hello Mediation Project, provides an overview of WESB-based programming fundamentals including Service Message Objects (SMO) and Mediation Flows. It helps us to build our first HelloMediationModule. Instructions are provided to create, implement, and assemble the HelloMediationModule and HelloProcess. These modules are then deployed on the WebSphere Process Server, which is a part of the WID Unit Test Environment.

Chapter 5, Business Process Choreography Fundamentals, discusses the various aspects and functions of WPS and WESB that are absolutely and fundamentally essential. The topics covered are Business Process (WS-BPEL), Business Objects, Business Rules, State Machines, Visual Snippets, Compensation, Fault Handling, and Control Structures .

Chapter 6, Mediations Fundamentals, performs an in-depth study of mediation flows, mediation primitives, and adapters. It walks us through the various aspects and concepts about Mediation primitives and Service Message Objects that are absolutely fundamental and essential. The other topics that this chapter touches upon are Adapters and Dynamic routing.

Chapter 7, Sales Fulfillment Application for JungleSea Inc., guides you through the steps involved in architecting the new Sales Fulfillment Application. It also identifies the appropriate WPS and WESB components that will have to be built.

Chapter 8, Walk the Talk, provides details around the assembly phase of the IBM SOA Reference Architecture. It discusses how to assemble components to catalog their interface and data types in shared libraries that can then be leveraged by the different modules of the Sales Fulfillment Application.

Chapter 9, Building the Order Handling Processes, guides us through how to build the Process Services modules, namely, ProcessServices-OrderHandling and ProcessServices-CustomerInterfaceManagement, and the associated businesses processes (BPELs). It starts with the creation of shared libraries and then provides a top-down breakup of the process, business, and access services that will be developed and assembled for the Sales Fulfillment Application. It covers several topics including BPEL development steps, using business rules in the process, implementing human tasks, usage of control structures, fault handling including compensation, correlation sets, and discusses how to test the business processes end-to-end, once the Business Service and Access Service modules have been built.

Chapter 10, Integration with Various Applications, walks you through the implementation of the first working version of the Sales Fulfillment Application along with all the business service modules (with the associated components) and the corresponding Access Services (with the associated components). Then it discusses how to perform unit testing and component testing. It also helps in the implementation of the Business and Access Service modules. It also provides a step-by-step method to implement them and unit test them.

Chapter 11, Business Space, provides an overview of the Business Space and touches upon some of the basic concepts and functionalities to help you get started.

Chapter 12, Deployment Topologies, provides information regarding the fundamental aspects to take into consideration when choosing a deployment topology. It discusses the fundamentals behind WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment (WAS ND), which is the base foundation platform for the IBM BPM portfolio of products including WPS and WESB. Then it discusses clustering, how to do vertical and horizontal clustering, and briefly looks at the databases used by WPS. It also discusses the several deployment patterns available from IBM and how, from them, we can choose the Remote Messaging and Remote Support topology pattern (gold topology) as the production topology.

Chapter 13, Management, Monitoring and Security, shows us how to perform some of the most common solution administration tasks, including how to use the admin console and various activities we can perform using it. Then it discusses installing versioned SCA modules and how to monitor the applications deployed on WPS/WESB. It also discusses various tools and capabilities provided in WID/WPS/WESB to monitor the applications and components.

Appendix, WID, WPS, and WESB Tips, Tricks, and Pointers will be a random yet useful collection of typical questions, how-tos, and tips on different topics when developing with WID, WPS, and WESB. It will cover some of the most common questions related to WID tooling, managing, and administering the runtime. This chapter is meant to be a quick reference where we scratch the surface of some advanced topics that warrant a book by itself. It aims to provide you with the right pointers so that you can get to the appropriate information and not have to search for it.

What you need for this book

This book covers building an application using the principles of BPM and SOA and using WPS and WESB. The various detailed aspects, features, and capabilities of the product will be conveyed though examples. It will also provide pragmatic guidance on various aspects in relation to building the SOA application.

The software needed for this book is

Operating system: Windows or Linux

WebSphere Integration Developer v7

- This includes an Integrated WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus test environments

- For software requirements on Windows refer: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=2308&context=SSQQFK&uid=swg27016958

- For software requirements on Linux refer: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=2308&context=SSQQFK&uid=swg27016957

Who this book is for

This book is for SOA architects, designers and developers who have a basic understanding of SOA concepts and would like to learn more about building solutions and applications using IBM WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: In WID the service component definition is included in the .component file.

A block of code is set as follows:

DataObject customerInfo) {} function with the following code: public DataObject requestCreditApproval(DataObject customerInfo) {     ServiceManager serviceManager = ServiceManager.INSTANCE;     BOFactory boFactory = (BOFactory)serviceManager.locateService(com/ibm/websphere/bo/BOFactory);     DataObject customerCreditApproval = boFactory.create(http://Ch6Library,CustomerCreditApproval);  customerCreditApproval.setString(id,customerInfo.getString(id));

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

manageprofiles(.bat)(.sh) -backupProfile -profileName profile_name -backupFile backupFile_name -username user_name -password password

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Click on the Add button and then click on the Finish button.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Questions

You can contact us at <[e-mail]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

Chapter 1. Introducing IBM BPM and ESB

JungleSea Inc. is a fictitious online retailer who sells a wide range of products including books, digital media, and electronics. They have a wide network of suppliers and partners, who participate in their ecosystem. JungleSea is under constant pressure to respond quickly to tactical changes happening in the market place, while adopting new business and operating models for rapid strategic change. Architects within JungleSea have been a big proponents of a Business Process Management (BPM) enabled by a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to help business and IT decisions to be aligned better. By adopting a BPM-SOA approach, they have, over time, demonstrated how they were able to reach the flexibility, reuse, and adaptability that made them better prepared to compete and win against their competitors. The SOA approach also gave them the potential to lower costs (from reuse), and increase revenue (from adaptability and flexibility). JungleSea Inc. had already selected and decided that it would use IBM WebSphere Process Server (WPS) and IBM WebSphere Enterprise Services Bus (WESB) as its core platform for its BPM enabled by SOA.

JungleSea's IT, like any other organization, has multi-faceted, multi-skilled, and multi-leveled employees. From time to time, they hire new people to infuse new blood and thinking into the system. Quite naturally, a BPM-enabled SOA approach can get overwhelming for new hires. This book is about taking the reader through a mentorship journey. The style of the book will be such that the reader will be introduced to the fundamental concepts, then walk them through numerous examples, and finally the journey of building an application using the principles of BPM and SOA and using WPS and WESB.

Alongside the journey, we will be using WPS and WESB as the vehicle to build the SOA application; the various detailed aspects, features, and capabilities of the product will be conveyed though examples. It will also provide practical and pragmatic guidance on various aspects in relation to building the SOA application. Every section will have solutions to common problems and pitfalls. The purpose of this book is to enable the reader to assume the role of the mentee (one who is being mentored; source: Merriam-Webster) and how he/she is introduced to various concepts in SOA, BPM Integration, and so on, and how we apply all these concepts while building a solution. The style of the book is:

A reference book that's organized into chapters, so you can flip right to what you need

A text that addresses the core concepts and practical ideas in BPM, enabled by SOA approach

A primer for getting started with BPM using WPS and WESB

A step-by-step guide for implementing BPM using WPS and WESB successfully

A compilation of WPS and WESB related resources that you can go to for additional help or continued education

In the first part, we will focus on the basics and overview of the key and essential concepts that a reader will require to go forward with the book. We will give a crash course on Business Integration, SOA Fundamentals, and SOA Programming Model. Then we will have the environment set up. Then, to give the reader a feel for the product, build the first Hello Process (with WPS) and Hello Mediation (with WESB) applications.

In the second part, we will build an SOA-based Order Management Application (named Sales Fulfillment Application) for JungleSea Inc. We will guide the reader through the various aspects and functions of WPS and WESB, which are absolutely necessary, through numerous practical examples. Then we will analyze the business requirements and rationalize our thoughts to see if an SOA approach is the right way. Then we will build SOA-based architecture, do a top-down decomposition, and identify use cases (and scenarios), business processes, and services/components.

In the third and final part, having built the SOA Application for JungleSea Inc., we will take the reader through various non-functional topics including Administration, Governance, Management, Monitoring, and Security. We will also discuss deployment topologies for WPS and WESB, performance tuning, and recommended practices. Finally, we will address a series of 'How Do I' questions that a reader typically ask.

In this chapter, we will:

Discuss how a BPM enabled by the SOA approach is the key to achieving success.

Discuss the key building blocks for a business process-driven integration enabled by SOA.

Briefly discuss the value of reference architectures and IBM SOA reference architecture.

Map the key building blocks of BPM enabled by SOA approach with the IBM SOA reference architecture.

Demonstrate what an instantiated solution architecture that has adopted IBM SOA reference architecture would look like.

Start introducing WebSphere Process Server and where it fits in the larger context of SOA. Also discuss its platform architecture and some of the common usage scenarios it will be used in.

Discuss Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and some of the key capabilities to look for in an ESB. We then introduce WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus Server and where it fits in the larger context of SOA. We also discuss its platform architecture and some of the common usage scenarios it will be used in.

What is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

There is no single unique and easy way to define or explain SOA. Given a room full of C-level executives, IT Managers, IT-Architects, and developers with each asked to give a one sentence explanation of what SOA is, for sure, each answer will be different. What is the fundamental message behind SOA? What is it trying to achieve and what does it provides the adopter with?