ActiveBPEL Designer功能分析

ActiveBPEL Designer Features

ActiveBPEL Designer gives you intuitive visual tooling to develop, validate, test (using simulation), deploy and remote debug your WS-BPEL 2.0/BPEL4WS 1.1 (BPEL) compliant processes. An overview of features included in ActiveBPEL Designer is provided below. For more information, refer to the Getting Started section of this document and to the ActiveBPEL User Guide that is available as online help in ActiveBPEL Designer and as a PDF file located in the /Docs directory of your ActiveBPEL Designer installation.

Visual Editing of BPEL Process Definitions

ActiveBPEL Designer allows process designers to focus on business aspects of development rather than on the syntax of the language when creating a BPEL process. The intuitive interface makes this possible.

Wizard interfaces to help create complex BPEL constructs

ActiveBPEL Designer provides wizard interfaces at key process definition points to help you quickly:

• Create new BPEL activities via drag-n-drop from business operations defined in Web Services Description Language (WSDL) files

• Generate BPEL-specific WSDL extensions for Partner Link Types

• Generate BPEL-specific WSDL extensions for variable properties and property aliases

Drag-n-Drop creation of all BPEL activities

ActiveBPEL Designer provides an extensive palette of BPEL activities that you can select and drag onto the Process Editor, including links between activities.

Visual creation of Copy operations

One of the more difficult tasks in developing a BPEL process is the creation of data manipulation statements, or Copy operations. ActiveBPEL provides a variety of visual controls that make this task as easy and accurate as possible including:

• Drag-n-Drop creation from the Process Variables view

The Process Variables view shows a visual representation of the variable formats defined in a BPEL process. From this view you can drag a part or element to a part or element of the same type in a different variable. This action results in a new Copy operation created in either the Assign activity in focus or a new Assign activity.

• Dialogs and expression builders for more complex Copy operations

From the Outline or the Properties view of an Assign activity, ActiveBPEL provides a Copy Operation assistant to insure that you create operations with the proper syntax for each type of Copy operation allowed.

Diagram and Outline views

ActiveBPEL Designer provides both diagrammatic and hierarchical (Outline) views of your processes. The Outline view allows you to see your process in a format consistent with its XML representation. The diagram and Outline views are synchronized.

Intelligent property sheets

The Properties view shows all required and optional properties for each activity type, link, partner link, and other BPEL constructs. Intelligent features include:

• Pre-filtered selections for required properties

• Dialogs for advanced properties or for properties with multiple choices

• Expression builders for creating transition and join conditions as well as advanced Copy operations

Comprehensive static analysis

When you save a BPEL process definition in ActiveBPEL Designer, the process is scanned for BPEL compliance. If the static analyzer discovers any issues with the BPEL file, tasks are automatically generated for each problem found including:

• Errors such as

• • Incomplete activities

  • No createInstance activity found

  • Invalid expressions

  • Variables not defined

  • Unresolved WSDL references

• Warnings such as

• • Variable defined but not used

  • Namespace defined but not referenced

  • Correlation sets not implemented

  • ActiveBPEL extension being used

Each generated task is displayed in a list and also appears as a visual artifact next to the activity that generated the task (if applicable).

Productivity Enhancers

ActiveBPEL Designer offers the BPEL designer a variety of productivity features.

Wizard interface for creation of Process WSDL

A BPEL process is deployed as a Web Service and the inputs and outputs of the process must have WSDL definitions that may need to be created. ActiveBPEL Designer provides functionality that reduces the complexity of creating the WSDL definitions using intelligent wizards.

Advanced categorization and visual display of WSDL files via Web References

The Web References view within ActiveBPEL Designer allows you to create a catalog of the WSDL definitions available for use in BPEL processes. Add your WSDL files to the Web References view and then drag-n-drop their business operations onto the Process Editor. The Operation Wizard guides you to create the appropriate BPEL activities and their associated properties.

Default visual layout creation when importing WS-BPEL 2.0 compliant process definitions

ActiveBPEL Designer allows you to add a WSDL file to Web References and then import the associated BPEL file. The Designer creates a diagrammatic representation of any WS-BPEL 2.0/BPEL4WS 1.1 compliant process definition when you import the file (with a .bpel file extension). You can then modify and test the process definition.

Capture and reuse of common sets of BPEL activities as custom activities

In many organizations, common functions or services are used across business processes. These functions can range from a simple service or activity to a group of activities that together make a business process. ActiveBPEL Designer makes it easy to create reusable functions. You simply select any number of activities on a process diagram and add them to the Custom activity palette by right mouse clicking to select Add to Palette. Custom activities become part of your toolkit for any process diagram.

Visual depiction of participant interactions via Swimlanes

ActiveBPEL Designer provides a powerful feature called Swimlanes for visualizing your process interactions with all participants. Using Swimlanes, you can easily:

• View a diagrammatic representation of the external interfaces to a process

You can see a diagrammatic representation of the interactions by selecting the Show Swimlanes icon on the main toolbar. You can hide all or some of the interactions from the right mouse menu on the Swimlane itself or hide all of the interactions using the Hide Swimlanes icon.

• Create abstract processes from executable processes

You can create BPEL abstract process definitions from the external interfaces in your diagrams. This means you can readily share abstract process definitions with participants (internal or external to your organization) that need to implement their portions of the process. Select a Swimlane, and from the right mouse menu or Export icon on the toolbar, create an abstract process definition. The abstract definition can be edited and extended using ActiveBPEL prior to distributing it to the appropriate participant(s).

Customize the visual representation of a process

ActiveBPEL provides a set of generic icons on the Process Editor canvas to represent activities. You can substitute your own graphical elements to represent more clearly your process activities’ functionality. You can also expand and collapse any container activity for quicker navigation within large BPEL processes.

User defined preferences

ActiveBPEL allows you to customize the layout of your workspace, save as many layouts as you like and easily switch between them so that the views that are important are available for different tasks within the Designer. Using the Preference panels you can:

• Set auto layout options

• Define the defaults used to create new BPEL process files and remote debugging sessions

• Configure the Simulation execution engine to the same options as your deployment server for BPEL extensions (if required) and custom XPath functions that you provide

• Language specific expression dialog displayed based on the process definition.

Pushbutton deployment

• ActiveBPEL eliminates the difficulty and complexity normally associated with deployment. The steps required to deploy a BPEL process to an ActiveBPEL server are:

• • Create a Process Deployment Descriptor (.pdd) file using an intuitive wizard to configure:

  • The method the engine will use to create a binding for an external services variable defined but not used

  • The Service endpoints and their policies that will be used to interact with the process

  • Optional process version information when deploying to an ActiveBPEL Enterprise server

  • Export a Business Process Archive (.bpr) file that contains one or more BPEL processes to the execution server

Advanced Testing and Debugging

ActiveBPEL Designer provides process simulation and remote debugging to ensure that critical business processes can be fully tested before and after deployment.

Process Simulation

Process simulation allows you to fully test the conditions and logic in your process without accessing live endpoints and without deploying your process to a BPEL server. Through innovative simulation techniques you can:

• Define sample documents representing the messages that are received by a process

• Set the results of a Web service invocation to simulate normal or fault conditions

• Execute On Event and On Alarm events at any appropriate point during simulation

• Set a breakpoint at any activity

• Walk through the execution path of a process either step-by-step or by running to a breakpoint

• Visually follow highlights along the execution path and state of activities

• Inspect process variables

Remote Debugging

Once your process is deployed to an ActiveBPEL Server, you can debug and correct the execution of running and suspended processes or analyze completed processes with the same ease as using process simulation. To begin remote debugging, point ActiveBPEL Designer at an ActiveBPEL server where processes are deployed and choose a method to attach to a process. You can:

• Select a currently running or completed process instance from a list

• Stop on the next execution of a named process or the next instantiated process

• Manually select processes or breakpoints in Designer and have the server stop on those

When the process instance is opened in Designer, you have full access to the debugging capabilities you use during simulation. You can:

• Set a breakpoint at any activity

• Walk through the execution path of a process either step-by-step or by running to a breakpoint

• Visually follow highlights along the execution path and state of activities

• Inspect and update process variables

• Retry or mark activities as completed

Assistance in migrating BPEL4WS 1.1 process definitions to WS-BPEL 2.0 syntax

When a BPEL4WS 1.1 process definition is open in the ActiveBPEL Editor you can choose to save the process as a WS-BPEL 2.0. During the Save As process, ActiveBPEL performs the following steps:

• Converts the syntax

• Replaces the activities as required (e.g., Switch becomes If)

• Converts bpws:getVariableData expressions to $ variable syntax when possible

• Modifies the Catch activities of fault handlers to declare the variables as part of the Catch

• Converts event handler syntax to include the required scope and variable declarations

Support for BPEL Extensions

ActiveBPEL Designer provides a unparalleled environment in which to create compliant BPEL processes. Responding to customer requests ActiveBPEL also provides functionality that is not covered by the specification including:

WS-BPEL 2.0 and BPEL4WS 1.1 Extensions

• Extension activities

  • Break

Provides an early exit from any of the supported looping constructs

• • Continue

Provides an early exit from an occurrence of the supported looping constructs.

• • Suspend

Suspends process execution until it is manually restarted and optionally sends an alert using the servers Alerting service.

• Overrides to standard BPEL behavior

  • Create XPath

Allows the engine to create an element that does not exist during a copy operation. This is a process level attribute in WS-BPEL 2.0 process and an engine configuration option for BPEL4WS 1.1 processes.

• • Suppress Selection Failure

Suppresses the standard BPEL fault if a query does not return a single node.

• Expression Languages

  • XQuery 1.0

  • JavaScript 1.5

• BPEL4WS 1.1 only extensions

  • forEach activity

Ability to execute, either sequentially or in parallel, a BPEL Scope activity for n occurrences

• Message Exchange

Support for deployments that use a single WDSL Port Type and Operation to concurrently process multiple messages.

Static analysis flags processes that contain ActiveBPEL extensions and provides an informational message when ever a process is saved or deployed to an ActiveBPEL server.

ActiveBPEL Designer provides the ability to read in BPEL process that include other vendors extensions, even those that are flagged as Must Understand, to be opened and reviewed without losing any of the extension syntax.