Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics

By Tanya Williams and Mark Nelson

Oracle BPM Suite is a popular and highly capable business process management system with extensive integration capabilities. BPMN, one of the most widely used process modeling notations, includes advanced capabilities for inter-process communication, working of arrays of data, and handling exceptions. However, these very same areas are often poorly understood. This book gives you the knowledge to create professional process models using these advanced features of BPMN. "Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics" is the only book available that provides coverage of advanced BPMN topics for Oracle BPM Suite, helping to fill in the gaps left by the product documentation, and giving you the information that you need to know to use BPMN to its full potential. This book covers the important theory behind inter-process communication, working with arrays and handling exceptions in BPMN, along with detailed, step-by-step practical exercises that demonstrate and consolidate this theoretical knowledge. Throughout the book we'll cover topics including different types of sub-processes, initializing and manipulating arrays, using the multi-instance embedded sub-process, fault propagation and more. With "Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics" in hand, you’ll gain detailed and practical experience in using the advanced features of BPMN to create professional BPMN processes with Oracle BPM. "Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics" is a concise tutorial which treats each topic to both a theoretical and practical approach. If you are a developer or architect working with Oracle BPM Suite 11g, this book is for you. Basic knowledge of BPM Suite and business process management in general is assumed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781849687577

Book preview

Table of Contents

Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Where to download the software from

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Inter-process Communication

Conversations

The default conversation

Correlation

Correlation sets

Correlation when there are multiple calls

Throw and catch events

Send and receive tasks

When to use throw/catch events and send/receive tasks

Messages, signals, and errors

Messages

Signals

Errors

Invoking sub-processes

Embedded sub-processes

Multi-instance embedded sub-processes

Reusable sub-processes

Recommended sub-process style to use

Summary

2. Inter-process Communication in Practice

Communicating between processes using messages and correlation

Communication between processes inside a loop

Communicating between processes using signals

Using reusable sub-processes

Summary

3. Working with Arrays

Data Associations

Creating an empty array

Creating an array with some empty elements

Creating an initialized array

Getting elements from arrays

Setting elements in arrays

Appending elements to arrays

Joining two arrays

Removing elements from arrays

Iterating over arrays with a multi-instance embedded sub-process

Cardinality or collection

Sequential or parallel

Using a completion condition

Scope

Practice: Iterating over an array using an embedded sub-process

Summary

4. Handling Exceptions

Mechanisms for catching exceptions in BPMN

Boundary events

Event sub-processes

Exception propagation with sub-processes and peer processes

Exception propagation with embedded sub-processes

Exception propagation with sub-processes invoked with a call activity

Exception propagation with peer processes invoked with a throw event

Exception propagation with peer processes invoked with a send task

How BPM exceptions affect the SCA composite

Summary

5. Handling Exceptions in Practice

Using boundary events to implement timeouts

Using boundary events to implement the cancel message use case

Using event sub-processes

Propagating exceptions using peer processes

Summary

Index

Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics

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Oracle BPM Suite 11g: Advanced BPMN Topics

Copyright © 2012 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, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and 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 of 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: September 2012

Production Reference: 1210912

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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ISBN 978-1-84968-756-0

www.packtpub.com

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

Credits

Authors

Mark Nelson

Tanya Williams

Reviewers

Bhagat Nainani

Prasen Palvankar

Robert Patrick

Acquisition Editor

Stephanie Moss

Commissioning and Content Editor

Meeta Rajani

Technical Editors

Ajay Shankar

Ameya Sawant

Project Coordinator

Esha Thakker

Proofreader

Matthew Humphries

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Graphics

Valentina Dsilva

Aditi Gajjar

Production Coordinator

Prachali Bhiwandkar

Cover Work

Prachali Bhiwandkar

About the Authors

Mark Nelson is a Consulting Solution Architect in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Architect's Team (known within the Oracle community as the A-Team) in Oracle Development. Mark spends a significant part of his time working with Oracle BPM Suite users around the world. His other main area of technical interest currently is Continuous Integration and its application to Oracle Fusion Middleware. Mark is one of the question authors for the Oracle SOA Certification Exam. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

Tanya Williams is a Principal Solution Consultant in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Sales Consulting team in Australia. Tanya has experience helping organizations understand Oracle's products, map the product capabilities to their business needs, develop demonstrations and proofs of concept, and giving advice and guidance on adoption of Oracle products. Tanya spends much of her time working with Oracle BPM Suite and how to use Oracle BPM Suite, SOA Suite and Service Bus to integrate with Oracle applications like E-Business Suite. Tanya has presented and run hands-on labs at Oracle OpenWorld. Tanya lives in Sydney, Australia.

Tanya and Mark contribute to the popular RedStack blog at http://redstack.wordpress.com, and have both presented at a number of Oracle OpenWorld and various regional Oracle User Group events.

Mark and Tanya would like to thank many people for their support in making this book a reality:



Stephanie, Meeta, Theresa, and all of the team at Packt Publishing for their help and support throughout this project.



Robert, Bhagat, and Prasen for their time, dedication, attention 
to detail, and detailed suggestions and comments.



Our respective management and colleagues for their support of 
this project.



All of the BPM development and product management team 
for their great work designing, building, and supporting Oracle 
BPM Suite.



And you, our readers, thank you.

About the Reviewers

Bhagat Nainani is currently Vice President of Product Development, Oracle Fusion Middleware and is responsible for product development and strategy for Business Process Management, Event Processing, and User Productivity Kit products. Over the past 18 years, he has held various technical leadership roles in database transaction processing, messaging, and middleware product groups at Oracle. He has extensive experience with SOA, process management, distributed systems, and EAI technologies. He has also contributed to many industry standards and holds patents in distributed systems.

Bhagat holds a BS in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi (India), a MS in Computer Science from University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley.

Prasen Palvankar has over 25 years of experience in information technology and is currently working as a Director of Product Management at Oracle. He is responsible for outbound SOA Suite and BPM Suite product-related activities such as providing strategic support and architectural and design consultation to Oracle's SOA Suite and BPM Suite current and prospective customers. His responsibilities also include field and partner enablement, and creating and rolling out advanced deep-dive training workshops. Prasen joined Oracle in 1998 and worked as a Technical Director in the Advanced Technology Solutions group in Oracle Consulting delivering large-scale integration projects before taking on his current role as Product Management Director in 2005. Prior to joining Oracle, he worked as a Principal Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation.

Prasen has co-authored booksGetting