BEA ALBPM 6.0 Programming 1 & 2: Essentials & Integration

This course teaches developers the essential programming concepts they need to develop rich, interactive business processes using BEA’s AquaLogic Interaction Business Process Management (ALBPM) product suite. It starts out with an introduction to Business Process Management and an overview of the ALBPM product suite. It then moves right into development topics.

Developers work with the activities that make up a business process, developing the code that implements business logic and integration. They also learn to develop UI code for end-user interaction, and use CSS for customization. They explore the Process Business Language in depth (the language you use to code the functionality behind business process activities). And they learn how to use the Dashboard feature to produce graphic displays to monitor running business processes. The course also covers details of how to integrate business processes with enterprise systems, web services and other components like databases, file systems, COM and .NET components. Developers learn additional details of the Notification/Wait activity and interprocess communication, allowing them to develop business processes that depend on actions from external systems. Finally, students learn exception handling techniques to use when integrating external components.

Audience

• Developer

Course Topics Architectural Overview

• Define the ALBPM Solution
• Identify the components of the ALBPM Product Suite
• Describe the purpose and functionality of the ALBPM Product Suite

Building the Basic Process

• Launch ALBPM Studio and create a new project
• Create a new process
• Create activities and transitions in a process
• Create process roles
• Create the initial trigger for a process
• Define documentation for a process

ALBPM Activity Types

• Identify the different types of activities that can exist in an ALBPM process
• Describe the functional differences between activity types

Using Variables

• Identify the different scopes of variables used in an ALBPM process
• Declare variables
• Understand the purpose of Business and Project Variables
• Use variables in conditional transitions

Process Business Language (PBL) Basics

• Use the Studio method editor to write process logic for conditional transitions
• Generate user inputs and displays by writing PBL code
• Use Studio code templates to quickly generate PBL code
• Explain the use of Time datatypes
• Use the various control flow constructs of PBL
• Use the Studio debugger

Roles and Participants

• Understand the Process organization structure
• Access the Organization elements in Studio
• Define Organization units, Roles, Groups, and Participants

Using the Workspace to Test a Process

• Configure the Workspace engine
• Describe the process of publishing and deploying a process to production runtime environments
• Participate in a business process using the Workspace

Building Screenflows

• Explain how screenflows are used in a process
• Use Business Process Management (BPM) Object presentations in a screenflow

Using BPM Objects

• Describe the purpose of a BPM object
• Describe the makeup of a BPM object
• Describe the component parts of a BPM object
• Create a BPM object with a Presentation

Split/Join Circuits

• Explain how Split / Join circuits work to improve the performance of a process
• Describe the purpose of a Split-N activity and how it differs from a Split activity
• Create a Split / Join circuit
• Write Join activity code to persist changes to variables
• Create a Split-N circuit
• Write code to create copies in Split-N

Subprocesses

• List the benefits of using subprocesses
• Explain how a subprocess can be made to run synchronously or asynchronously
• Create a subprocess and call it from a subflow activity
• Create a set of subprocesses and call them dynamically

Handling Exceptions – The Basics

• Describe the types of exceptions common to processes
• Describe what an Exception Handler Flow is
• Identify the different types of Exception Handler Flows
• Discuss how to use Exception Handler Flows

Integrating Database Components

• Access database tables, views, and stored procedures directly from your PBL code and integrate them into your process
• Expose tables for direct access
• Integrate embedded SQL statements with your PBL code
• Create SQL and SQL Query components
• Display database data in your business process application

Coding Dashboards

• Code a Dashboard with two dimensions of data
• Use different chart types in a dashboard
• Code a Drill-down Dashboard
• Work with server-side and client-side methods
• Combine several charts in a single dashboard
• Code a Dashboard with three dimensions of data

External Components Overview

• Define and explain the relationship between external components and external resources
• List and describe the types of external technologies you can integrate into process as external components
• Describe the benefits of using BPM Objects with external components

Integrating Java Components

• Describe the different types of packaged Java components available to you in Studio
• Catalog an external Java application to be used as a component in your process
• Describe the way Enterprise Java Beans can be integrated into your ALBPM application

Working with Database Components

• Wrap a database component in a BPM Object
• Explain how you would use the inherited methods of the SQLObject to process an update
• Describe the difference between server side and client side methods
• List several situations in which you might use the DynamicSQL component

Exception Handling and Compensation

• Handle exceptions within your method code
• Describe how to wrap a system exception in a user defined business exception
• List the components involved in compensation
• Explain how compensation works

Using the File I/O Components

• Identify the major Fuego I/O components
• Describe how to use the Fuego I/O components
• Describe some of the best practices around developing I/O functionality in a process

Integrating XML Components

• Describe two ways to read XML data
• Identify what an XSD file is
• Describe the two ways to use XML data in a process
• Describe how to introspect an XSD file
• Describe how to load XML data and later work with it
• Describe how to create an XML wrapper object

Integrating COM and .NET Components

• Describe how COM and .NET technologies are integrated into an ALBPM application
• Introspect a COM component and use it within an ALBPM process
• Introspect a .NET component and use it within an ALBPM process

Integrating Web Pages, Notifying a Process and Interprocess Communication

• List some ways you can integrate external web pages into your ALBPM process
• Explain how BPM Objects are used to communicate with JSPs using BPM Object Interactive Calls
• Describe the different ways that Interprocess notification can occur
• Explain the purpose of the Notification Wait and the Process Notification activities
• Describe how to programmatically notify a process
• Describe some of the different ways that Interprocess communication can be accomplished with an ALBPM process
• Explain the differences between PAPI, PAPI-WS, and WAPI
• Describe how a process can be exposed as a Web Service and be made available to other processes or applications

Course Objectives

• Develop code using the ALBPM Business Process Language
• Develop code for all activity types, including split/join and notification wait
• Use ALBPM Studio to define and manage users and roles
• Deploy project code on test and production engines
• Debug process code
• Implement exception handling at the business process and code levels
• Develop business process UI (screen flows and presentations)
• Customize the UI with CSS
• Develop code to integrate business processes with components like Database, XML files, and Web services
• Work with Interprocess Communication in activity code
• Work with Process Objects
• Develop code to monitor running business processes