8-2 understanding webmethods product suite

Title Page

Understanding the webMethods Product Suite

Version 8.2

April 2011

Copyright& Docu-ment ID
This document applies to webMethods Product Suite Version 8.2 and to all subsequent releases.

Specifications contained herein are subject to change and these changes will be reported in subsequent release notes or new editions.

Copyright © 1998-2011 Software AG, Darmstadt, Germany and/or Software AG USA, Inc., Reston, VA, United States of America, and/or their licensors.

Detailed information on trademarks and patents owned by Software AG and/or its subsidiaries is located at http://documentation.softwareag.com/legal/.

Use of this software is subject to adherence to Software AG's licensing conditions and terms. These terms are part of the product documentation, located at http://documentation.softwareag.com/legal/ and/or in the root installation directory of the licensed product(s).

This software may include portions of third-party products. For third-party copyright notices and license terms, please refer to “License Texts, Copyright Notices and Disclaimers of Third-Party Products”. This document is part of the product documentation, located at http://documentation.softwareag.com/legal/and/or in the root installation directory of the licensed product(s).

Document ID: WEBM-UN-82SP1-20110401

http://documentation.softwareag.com/legal/



Table of Contents

About this Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7Document Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Documentation Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Online Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1. The webMethods Product Suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Integration Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Integration Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15webMethods Broker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Adapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16EntireX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17ApplinX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Web Enablement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Instant Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19HTML Emulation Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Composite Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

SOA Enablement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Business-to-Business Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Trading Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21eStandards Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Complex Event Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Event-Driven Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

webMethods Broker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Integration Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Complex Event Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Event Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Composite Applications Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Blaze Advisor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30My webMethods Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31Integration Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Business Process Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Service Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Rules Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Task Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Understanding the webMethods Product Suite Version 8.2 3

Integration Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37webMethods Broker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37My webMethods Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

SOA Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38CentraSite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Mediator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Collaborative Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Business Activity Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Optimize . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45webMethods Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46MashZone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

System Administration Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Software AG Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Software AG Update Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Database Scripts and the Database Component Configurator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Deployer and the Asset Build Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

2. Administering the webMethods Product Suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Installing or Uninstalling webMethods Products and Fixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Upgrading Products and Migrating Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Creating or Dropping Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Configuring Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Monitoring System Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Setting Up System Resource Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Analyzing System Resource Monitoring Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Monitoring and Managing Services and Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Deploying Assets from One Environment to Another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Scaling the webMethods Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Integration Server Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Mediator Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Trading Networks Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58My webMethods Server Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Optimize Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58webMethods Broker Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Policy-Based Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58High-Availability Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

4 Understanding the webMethods Product Suite Version 8.2

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

3. Developing Integration Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Developing an Integration Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Implementation Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63Propagation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

4. Designing Business Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68High-Level Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Detailed Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Configuring Process Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Creating Documents, Services, Tasks, and Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Developing Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Simulating and Debugging Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Logging and Monitoring Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Mapping Process Steps to Run Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

5. Business Administration and Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Business Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Administering Business Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75Monitoring Business Process Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Administering and Monitoring Trading Networks Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

6. Setting up Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Setting Up Security within the webMethods Product Suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Firewall Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83


About this Guide

This guide describes webMethods Product Suite 8.2 and explains how to use the products together to accomplish a variety of goals. webMethods Product Suite 8.2 includes the products below.

webMethods ApplinX

ARIS MashZone

webMethods Asset Build Environment

Blaze and Blaze Advisor

webMethods Broker

CentraSite

webMethods Communicate

webMethods Content Service Platform

webMethods Database Component Configurator

webMethods Deployer

Software AG Designer

webMethods Developer (deprecated)

webMethods EntireX

webMethods Event Server

webMethods Integrated Authentication Framework

webMethods Integration Server

webMethods Mediator

webMethods Monitor

My webMethods Server

webMethods Optimize

webMethods Process Engine

webMethods Rules Engine

webMethods Report Server

webMethods System Management Hub

webMethods Task Engine

webMethods Trading Networks


About this Guide

webMethods Web Services Stack

Document Conventions

Documentation Installation

You can download the product documentation using the Software AG Installer. Depending on the release of the webMethods product suite, the location of the downloaded documentation will be as shown in the table below.

Convention Description

Bold Identifies elements on a screen.

Narrowfont Identifies storage locations for services on webMethods Integration Server, using the convention folder.subfolder:service.

UPPERCASE Identifies keyboard keys. Keys you must press simultaneously are joined with a plus sign (+).

Italic Identifies variables for which you must supply values specific to your own situation or environment. Identifies new terms the first time they occur in the text.

Monospace font Identifies text you must type or messages displayed by the system.

{ } Indicates a set of choices from which you must choose one. Type only the information inside the curly braces. Do not type the { } symbols.

| Separates two mutually exclusive choices in a syntax line. Type one of these choices. Do not type the | symbol.

[ ] Indicates one or more options. Type only the information inside the square brackets. Do not type the [ ] symbols.

... Indicates that you can type multiple options of the same type. Type only the information. Do not type the ellipsis (...).

For webMethods... The documentation is downloaded to...

6.x The installation directory of each product.

7.x A central directory named _documentation in the main installation directory (webMethods by default).

8.x A central directory named _documentation in the main installation directory (Software AG by default).


About this Guide

Online Information

You can find additional information about Software AG products at the locations listed below.

Note: The Empower Product Support Web site and the Software AG Documentation Web site replace Software AG ServLine24 and webMethods Advantage.

If you want to... Go to...

Access the latest version of product documentation.

Software AG Documentation Web site

http://documentation.softwareag.com

Find information about product releases and tools that you can use to resolve problems.

See the Knowledge Center to:

Read technical articles and papers.

Download fixes and service packs.

Learn about critical alerts.

See the Products area to:

Download products.

Download certified samples.

Get information about product availability.

Access older versions of product documentation.

Submit feature/enhancement requests.

Empower Product Support Web site

https://empower.softwareag.com


http://documentation.softwareag.com

https://empower.softwareag.com/KnowledgeCenter/default.asp

https://empower.softwareag.com/Products/default.asp

https://empower.softwareag.com

About this Guide

Access additional articles, demos, and tutorials.

Obtain technical information, useful resources, and online discussion forums, moderated by Software AG professionals, to help you do more with Software AG technology.

Use the online discussion forums to exchange best practices and chat with other experts.

Expand your knowledge about product documentation, code samples, articles, online seminars, and tutorials.

Link to external Web sites that discuss open standards and many Web technology topics.

See how other customers are streamlining their operations with technology from Software AG.

Software AG Developer Community for webMethods

http://communities.softwareag.com/

If you want to... Go to...


http://communities.softwareag.com/

1 The webMethods Product Suite

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Integration Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Business-to-Business Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Complex Event Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Composite Applications Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Business Process Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

SOA Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Collaborative Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Business Activity Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

System Administration Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47



Overview

The webMethods Product Suite is an integrated set of design tools, run-time servers, registry/repositories, and Internet browser-based user interfaces that enable you to:

Develop and run integration solutions.

Create and manage a business-to-business integration network.

Develop and execute complex business events.

Develop and run composite applications.

Design and run business processes.

Develop and govern a service-oriented architecture.

Develop assets in a collaborative development environment.

Monitor and improve the performance and efficiency of business activity.

The webMethods Product Suite also offers tools for:

Installing and uninstalling products and fixes.

Upgrading products and migrating data.

Creating and dropping databases.

Deploying assets developed in the product suite from one environment to another.

This chapter describes the webMethods products you use to perform each of the activities listed above.

Note: Some webMethods products are used to perform multiple activities, and therefore are discussed in multiple sections in this chapter.

Integration Solutions

Integration solutions enable disparate resources to share business data. Resources include software applications such as SAP and Siebel, and systems such as databases and mainframe programs. Common integration solutions include:

Synchronization. For example, two stores in a chain of retail stores maintain customer, product SKU, and product price information. One store maintains the information in a database and the other in a mainframe program. When information is added to or changed in the resource at one store, an integration solution updates the resource at the other store.



Propagation. For example, a human resources (HR) person enters data for a new employee in a composite application and an integration solution propagates the data to a human resources (HR) database, a retirement plan mainframe program, and an employee benefits application.

Composition. For example, an HR person requests a report on an employee through a composite application. An integration solution gathers the data for the report from an HR database, a retirement plan mainframe program, and an employee benefits application, and then returns the data to the Web application for display in report format.



The primary webMethods products you use to develop integration solutions are Designer, Integration Server, webMethods Broker, webMethods adapters, EntireX, and ApplinX.

Designer

Designer is an Eclipse-based graphical development tool that offers a Service Development perspective for designing and testing services. A service is logic that performs a unit of work. For example, a service could post a purchase order received from a customer to an ordering system, or perform a credit check for a loan application. The illustration below shows a service in Designer.



You can develop simple services (that is, services that perform one unit of work) in Designer using the webMethods Flow language, or using other languages such as Java. You can also develop aggregate services, in which services call other services (for example, to propagate data from one resource to several other resources). Flow language is particularly powerful for developing composite services, in which a service is wrapped around multiple simple or aggregate services that execute in sequential order (for example, to compose a report by gathering data from one resource after another). The wrapper service manages the flow of data from service to service. Any of these types of services can constitute an integration solution. Designer builds your services on Integration Server, which executes the services at run time.

You can incorporate Web services from SOA registries such as CentraSite into integration solutions you build in Designer. Conversely, Designer can create Web services from services that reside on Integration Server and can register the Web services with SOA registries such as CentraSite.

Integration Server

Integration Server's function in integration solutions is the execution of services. Integration Server does the following:

1 Receives requests from client applications and authenticates and authorizes the requesting users.

2 Invokes the appropriate services and passes them input data from the requesting clients.

3 Receives output data from the services and returns it to the clients.

Integration Server supports a wide range of established and emerging standards so you can interact with virtually any business partner that is connected to the Internet.

webMethods Broker

webMethods Broker is a high-speed message router that can use asynchronous publish-subscribe or point-to-point messaging. Information providers (publishers) publish data to webMethods Broker and then move on to other activities, while information

Integration Server supports... Such as...

Transport standards HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP

Message formats MIME, S/MIME

Data standards XML and XML Schema, custom flat file formats with delimited fixed- or variable-length records

Protocols SOAP, XML RPC, JMS

Specifications Web Service Description Language (WSDL)

Integration patterns REST, Web services, event-driven, request-reply



consumers (subscribers) subscribe to and retrieve the data when convenient. webMethods Broker serves as the intermediary that routes data from publishers to subscribers. It can function as the messaging backbone for resources across your enterprise and can support an event-driven architecture, in which subscribers receive documents and then perform predefined actions.

webMethods products publish data to webMethods Broker in the form of documents. Each webMethods document is associated with a document type, a schema-like definition that describes the document's structure. For example, a document type named PurchaseOrder might describe the structure of data in a purchase order document. You define document types and list the subscribers to document types on webMethods Broker. When a publisher publishes a document to webMethods Broker, webMethods Broker looks up the subscriber list for that document type and queues the document for the subscribers, each of which retrieves the document and processes it when convenient.

webMethods Broker offers two messaging protocols: a webMethods proprietary messaging protocol and the Java Message Service (JMS) protocol. Within the webMethods product suite, Integration Server is the primary document publisher and subscriber, and can communicate with webMethods Broker directly using either protocol. Applications in non-webMethods product suite environments can communicate with webMethods Broker through custom Broker or JMS clients you develop using APIs provided with webMethods Broker. For the webMethods proprietary messaging protocol, webMethods Broker provides Java and C APIs. For the JMS protocol, webMethods Broker provides JMS and C# APIs. Applications in non-webMethods product suite environments can also communicate with webMethods Broker through the webMethods JMS client libraries within a JMS-compliant application or platform.

In addition, webMethods Broker can exchange documents with J2EE application servers such as the IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, JBoss, and SunONE application servers.

Adapters

webMethods adapters connect resources in your enterprise to the webMethods product suite and, through the suite, to each other. While Integration Server supports a variety of standards such as XML, adapters support proprietary protocols for accessing packaged applications such as SAP, Siebel, JD Edwards, Oracle Applications, and PeopleSoft; databases such as Oracle, SQL Server, Informix, Sybase, and DB2; and mission-critical programs on mainframes and UNIX systems. Adapters transform data from resource-specific format into the format used within the webMethods product suite, and vice versa. They enable you to incorporate resources into integration solutions without having to build complex custom code. Adapters run on Integration Server.

Adapters convey data from resources to the webMethods product suite. Adapters can either actively poll resources for new or changed data or passively receive new or changed data from resources. For example, the webMethods JDBC Adapter can receive data from a database, transform it from the database-specific format into the webMethods format, and send the transformed data to services on Integration Server for further processing.



Adapters convey data from the webMethods product suite to resources. For example, a JDBC Adapter service can receive data from an Integration Server service, transform it from webMethods format into the format required by the database, and insert it into the database.

EntireX

EntireX enables you to easily connect services that run on Integration Server to mission-critical programs on mainframes and UNIX systems, and vice versa.

In the webMethods product suite, EntireX includes three main components:

The EntireX Adapter, which runs on Integration Server.

The EntireX perspective in Designer, which enables you to generate adapter services on Integration Server.

The EntireX Broker, which supports load balancing, security, large messages, and high availability.

You use the EntireX perspective in Designer to connect to a mainframe or UNIX system and extract a program's signature (that is, input and output fields). You can extract the signatures of programs written in COBOL, PL/I, or Natural for CICS, IMS and batch environments. EntireX provides wizards that guide you through signature extraction and code generation, and relieve you from having to work with technical details. For example, you can generate an adapter service on an Integration Server that hosts the EntireX Adapter; EntireX will create all technical assets needed to support communication between the service and the mainframe or UNIX program for you. You can test the adapter service in Designer.

For advanced use cases, however, the technical details are still accessible. For example, the input and output fields appear in Designer in Software AG's Interface Definition Language (IDL) and are stored in an IDL file in the Designer workspace. You can edit the



field names (for example, to make them more self-explanatory). You can group extracted signatures from multiple programs in a single IDL file. The illustration below shows extracted signatures for two mainframe programs in the EntireX perspective.

When you run the adapter service on Integration Server, it invokes the mainframe or UNIX program using values you provide for the program's extracted inputs. You can use the adapter service in integration solutions as you would any other Integration Server service. Designer can create a Web service from the adapter service and can register the Web service in SOA registries such as CentraSite. You can then easily use the Web services to include mainframe resources in business-to-business integrations (B2B) and business processes.

Since the EntireX architecture is symmetric, it allows for outbound as well as inbound connectivity. For example, if you have mainframe or UNIX programs that require functionality that is available in Flow or Web services, or that trigger processes from the mainframe-based IT core of your company, EntireX helps you easily enhance the programs to invoke those services using the tools described above.

ApplinX

ApplinX is a server-based technology that provides an efficient, robust, and easy way for Web-based applications to access and integrate data and transactions from core system applications without changing those applications.



ApplinX exposes core system applications and encapsulates them in components such as Web applications and Web services using standard programmatic environments such as .NET or J2EE. You can then use these components as advanced building blocks in any modern development platform, for new or existing applications such as CRM applications. In this way, you can integrate core system applications into new strategic IT platforms, and can re-engineer your workflow using a more streamlined and efficient task-oriented and role-based approach.

ApplinX offers two types of solutions: Web enablement and SOA enablement. You use the ApplinX perspective in Designer for both types of development work. The illustration below shows the ApplinX perspective.

Web Enablement

Web enablement allows you to turn existing host 'green screens' into Web interfaces. You can achieve a true Web look and feel without touching existing applications or changing any code. ApplinX offers the Web enablement solutions described below.

Instant Solution

The instant solution enables you to turn core system applications into modern-looking Web applications with little or no coding. Simple configurations to the Web applications can improve the general look and feel of the application; for example, you can design a



template with top and side images and a company logo, and modify the style sheet using different fonts, colors, and so on. These changes enable the end user to access information more quickly and with improved visibility.

In Designer, you can use screen groups, which allow you to apply the same design to multiple screens. You can use transformations to convert host screen patterns into Web components. Transformations can include formatting the screen's header area, message line, titles, and borders; transforming host function keys into hyperlinks, buttons, or images; converting input fields into GUI elements such as combo boxes, radio buttons, or check boxes; adding calendar components to date input fields; and removing unnecessary characters.

HTML Emulation Solution

ApplinX's thin client HTML emulation is available in .NET and J2EE environments. ApplinX can instantly turn a host terminal emulation into a Web browser terminal emulation that provides host key and print support and maintains existing color schemes.

Composite Solution

The composite solution, available in .NET and J2EE environments, enables you to fully customize and extend your Web applications. You can aggregate information from multiple core system applications into a single Web page. You can integrate legacy assets at the screen, transaction, or data level, and support various Web environments using the ApplinX Base Objects API for customizing the Web framework.

SOA Enablement

SOA enablement allows you to reuse core system application functionality and leverage the operational qualities of a system's transaction platform to new IT projects. You expose core system application functionality and data as Web services at the screen or transaction level, and integrate with other environments that invoke Web services.

In Designer, you can create procedures and use them to turn application functionality into Web services. You can combine disparate data sources into Web services using ApplinX entities such as screens, programs, databases, and external Web services. ApplinX supports Web service standards such as SOAP and WSDL, and JAXR for registering services in SOA registries such as CentraSite.

Business-to-Business Integration

Business to business, or B2B, describes electronic commerce, or e-commerce, transactions between businesses (as opposed to between businesses and consumers). Businesses that engage in electronic commerce transactions are called trading partners, and can include retailers, manufacturers, suppliers, and marketplaces.



E-commerce transactions between trading partners usually involve the exchange of business documents using automated processes. A B2B integration network, or trading network, consists of a set of trading partners that conduct business by exchanging mutually agreed-upon business document types electronically. For example, a trading network might include computer retailers, a computer manufacturer, and computer parts suppliers. The retailers might send purchase order documents to the manufacturer, which returns purchase order acknowledgement, shipping notice, and invoice documents. Similarly, the manufacturer might send purchase order documents to the parts suppliers, and so on.

Some industries have developed e-commerce standards for exchanging business documents. For example, many manufacturing companies use the EDI messaging standard to conduct business electronically. An e-commerce standard typically defines the business document types and transport protocols that trading partners need to use in exchanges, and specifies document exchange rules.

The primary webMethods products you use to build and manage a trading network are Trading Networks and eStandards Modules.

Trading Networks

You use Trading Networks to build and manage a peer-to-peer or hub-and-spoke network of trading partners. Trading Networks enables trading partners to exchange business documents in XML and structured flat-file formats.

You build the elements you need to define and link trading partners in the Trading Networks browser-based user interface. The illustration below shows a partner profile definition in this user interface.



Elements you need to define and link trading partners are as follows:

Element Purpose

Trading partner definitions

Define and administer your trading partners.

Business document types

Define the business documents that trading partners want to exchange. A business document type can define an industry-standard document, such as an EDI, RosettaNet, cXML, CBL, or OAG document, or a custom business document.

Processing rules Define how to process business documents. For example, the processing rule for a purchase order you receive from a trading partner might verify the sender's signature and then submit it to your order management system.

Note: If you need more complicated processing than is possible in the Trading Networks user interface, you can design a business process in Designer to use in addition to or instead of a processing rule.



Trading Networks runs on Integration Server and manages the exchange of business documents among trading partners. When Trading Networks receives a document, it processes the document according to the processing rule for that document type.

eStandards Modules

The webMethods product suite supports e-commerce standards for various industries. This support comes in the form of webMethods eStandards Modules that run on Integration Server and usually require Trading Networks. Each eStandards Module defines the industry-standard or proprietary transport protocol, provides an e-commerce standard's business document types, and specifies the standard's document exchange rules. When Integration Server receives a document that matches a business document type in an eStandards Module, it processes the document according to the document exchanges rules specified in the module.

The webMethods product suite provides eStandards Modules for the industries below.

Complex Event Processing

Complex Event Processing (CEP) is an emerging technology in business systems. It provides continuous, real-time insight into events that are flowing through business networks. Originally used in ultra high-volume stock trading scenarios, CEP is expanding into other aspects of business due to its ability to improve end-to-end visibility, situational awareness, and business agility.

Complex event processing begins with the arrival of simple events containing business data. Typically, the events are emitted from live data sources, such as sensors or instrumentation in a business process. The streams of simple events are analyzed in real time to identify and extract complex events. A complex event is a specific combination of simple events that represents a condition, a trend, or a change that is meaningful to your organization.

Trading Partner Agreements (TPAs)

Customize the way in which documents are exchanged between trading partners. For example, you and a trading partner might use a TPA to specify a custom ID field to include in all business documents.

Industry eStandards Modules

Manufacturing RosettaNet, Chem, PIDX, papiNet

Financial services SWIFT, ACH, FIX

Consumer packaged goods and retail 1SYNC, ebXML, HIPAA

Healthcare HIPAA, HL7

Element Purpose



As CEP technologies become more mainstream, they are being applied to more and more business cases. These include:

Financial (credit card and debit card fraud detection, trading optimization).

Logistics monitoring (package tracking, fleet management, route optimization).

Manufacturing (defect detection, machine monitoring, operations optimization).

Healthcare (fraudulent claims detection, patient monitoring, safety operations).

Government (homeland security, system security, suspicious activity monitoring).

webMethods supports CEP in three ways:

Event-driven architecture (EDA). EDA is a software architecture pattern that supports the production and detection of events, and the consumption of and reaction to events.

Continuous query development. webMethods offers products you can use to develop and execute continuous queries for monitoring an input stream of events and emitting an output stream of events.

Event publishers and consumers. Integration Server and some products it hosts (for example, Communicate), MashZone, and the webMethods JMS Adapter support EDA.

Event-Driven Architecture

The webMethods products that enable EDA are webMethods Broker, Designer, and Integration Server.

webMethods Broker

EDA uses webMethods Broker to distribute event data. Event producers provide data to webMethods Broker, while event consumers receive the data. webMethods Broker serves as the intermediary that delivers the data from producers to consumers.

EDA uses the webMethods Broker Java Message Service (JMS) API. Event producers publish JMS messages to webMethods Broker in the form of events. Each EDA event is associated with an event type, an XML schema or schema-based definition that describes the event’s structure. Each event type is associated with a JMS topic. Event consumers use JMS subscriptions to receive events on JMS topics. Within the webMethods product suite, products such as the Event Server and Integration Server publish and subscribe to events on the JMS topics. Communicate publishes events, while MashZone subscribes to events.

Applications in non-webMethods product suite environments can use standard JMS clients to communicate with webMethods Broker.



Designer

Designer is an Eclipse-based graphical development tool that offers a Event Type Development perspective for developing event types. You create and edit event types within event type projects. webMethods provides predefined event types you can include in your projects. The illustration below shows an event type in Designer.

Event types are suite-wide assets. You deploy them to a run-time repository called the Event Type Store, which is shared by all products that support EDA. The JMS objects needed to support the event type are automatically created during deployment. After an event type is deployed, any product can produce or consume events based on that event type.

You can store event type projects in the Designer workspace, and deploy them from Designer to the Event Type Store. You can also store event type projects in a version control system and use Deployer and the Asset Build Environment to deploy them to the Event Type Store. You can govern your event types using CentraSite.

Integration Server

Integration Server offers built-in services that support EDA. One service transforms an event into a document, while another sends an event to a JMS topic.



Complex Event Processing

The webMethods products that support complex event processing (CEP) are Designer and the Event Server.

Designer

Designer is an Eclipse-based graphical development tool that offers a Continuous Query Development perspective for developing continuous query projects. Continuous query projects specify the following:

The input stream to the query. You specify the names of JMS topics on which the events to use as input are published. For example, a hospital might have JMS topics on which patient pulse rate and blood pressure readings (events) are published.

The output stream from the query. You specify the names of JMS topics to which to publish events emitted by the continuous query during execution (for example, critical patient alerts).

A declarative query that defines event correlations of interest. For example, a query could generate a critical patient alert when pulse rate is more than 20% above average as correlated against readings taken in the past 10 minutes, and blood pressure is more than 2 standard deviations above or below average as correlated against readings taken in the last hour.

Event sequences. You use these to test continuous queries in an offline mode using sample data you create.

Database sources. You can use data from databases to provide additional historical data against which to correlate. For example, a hospital might add yearly patient pulse rate and blood pressure readings.

User-defined functions. Designer offers functions for calculating such measurements as averages and standard deviations. You can also define your own functionality. For example, the Navy might define a function that calculates the proximity of carriers to each other.

The illustration below shows a continuous query in Designer.



You can store continuous query projects in the Designer workspace, and deploy them from Designer to the Event Server. You can also store continuous query projects in a version control system and use Deployer and the Asset Build Environment to deploy them to the Event Server.

Event Server

The Event Server executes continuous queries. When you deploy a continuous query project from Designer to the Event Server, the Event Server checks whether the event types specified in the project exist in the shared Event Type Store. If they do not, the Event Server adds the event types to the shared Event Type Store and creates a JMS topic on which to publish each event type.

Composite Applications Development

A composite application is made up of portlet applications and services that present data from multiple resources on one or more Web pages for the end user. Composite applications are also used to create modernized front ends for legacy systems. Suppose you have a mainframe program that stores customer orders and the names of sales representatives. You could create a customer management composite application that pulls that data from the mainframe program and displays it on a Web page. When the



end user clicks an order, the composite application gets the order details from the mainframe program and displays it on another Web page. When the end user clicks a sales representative, the composite application gets customer data from the mainframe program and displays the locations and contact information for the sale representative's customers on a Google map.

The primary webMethods product you use to develop composite applications is Designer. You might also use Blaze Advisor and CentraSite. The webMethods products you use to execute composite applications are My webMethods Server and Integration Server.

Designer

Designer is an Eclipse-based graphical development tool that offers a UI Development perspective for designing composite applications.

You create the composite application interfaces in Designer by dragging and dropping JavaServer Faces (JSF) controls onto a design canvas. You configure each JSF control to perform a specific function, such as submitting a command, alerting a user, obtaining user input (for example, through check boxes or drop-down lists), or adding rendering logic to Web pages. Other JSF controls enable you to link and navigate among portlets and Web pages. Designer offers an extensive library of JSF controls. You can then add other components such as Java or Web services to the composite application to retrieve and manipulate data.

The illustration below shows a view from a portlet application in Designer.



The Web pages in your composite applications can invoke services such as Flow, Web, adapter, and rule services. Within Designer, you can develop Flow and Web services, and you can create adapter services that invoke programs on mainframes and UNIX systems. Designer builds its services on Integration Server. If you need to develop rule services, Designer can launch Blaze Advisor. Blaze Advisor deploys rules to Integration Server, which generates them as rule services.

You can drag and drop the services you want the Web pages to invoke onto the design canvas from Integration Server. In a collaborative design environment, you can also drag and drop services from CentraSite. CentraSite operates as a shared SOA registry/repository of metadata about assets that were developed in Designer and that are stored on run-time servers such as Integration Server and My webMethods Server.

The Web pages in your composite applications can also access and display data stored in databases. You can connect to a database from Designer and then drag and drop database-related items, such as database tables, that you want to use in the Web pages onto the design canvas.

Composite applications run on My webMethods Server. Composite applications built in Designer can use the latest Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) technology. With this technology, an Ajax engine acts as the intermediary between the user and My webMethods Server, significantly improving My webMethods Server's response to user input. Composite applications built in Designer comply with the Java Server Faces (JSF) and Java Specification Request (JSR)168 standard.



Blaze Advisor

webMethods product suite includes an enhanced implementation of Blaze Advisor. Blaze Advisor is a graphical development tool for creating rules to use in composite applications and business processes. Blaze Advisor lets you develop rules using decision trees and decision tables. The illustration below shows a rule decision tree.

You deploy rules from Blaze Advisor to Integration Server, which generates them as rule services and executes them at run time. You can view and test deployed rule services in Designer just like other services.

Blaze uses My webMethods Server to enable business administrators to make simple changes to rules without having to involve a developer. For example, after a developer builds the rule decision tree shown above in Blaze Advisor, a business administrator could display it in the Blaze browser-based user interface and easily add new car models to the table.

To make a Blaze rule available for editing, you generate a Blaze rule maintenance application (RMA) for the rule from Blaze Advisor. An RMA is a composite application that includes the Blaze browser-based user interface that displays the rule in editable form. You deploy the RMA from Blaze Advisor to My webMethods Server and check the rule into the Blaze repository, which serves as a version control system for the rule. The business administrator checks out the rule from the Blaze repository, edits the rule in the Blaze user interface, and checks the rule back in to the repository. Finally, the business administrator redeploys the rule to Integration Server, which regenerates it as a rule service and executes it at run time.




Designer publishes composite applications to My webMethods Server. My webMethods Server also hosts composite applications that provide browser-based user interfaces for Blaze Advisor, webMethods Broker, Integration Server, Monitor, Trading Networks, and Optimize.

My webMethods Server provides user management capabilities that enable you to customize the look and feel of Web pages and control user access to them. My webMethods Server user management also provides a single location from which to define and manage users for most webMethods products.

My webMethods Server provides a built-in Jetty Web server that supports both HTTP and HTTPS. You can use an external Web server, or cluster of Web servers, with My webMethods Server (for example, if an external Web server better complies with your corporate IT security policies). My webMethods Server can integrate with the leading Web servers, such as Microsoft Internet Information Server or Apache HTTP Server.

Integration Server

Services developed in Designer are built on Integration Server. Rules developed in Blaze Advisor are deployed to Integration Server, which generates them as rule services. Integration Server's function in composite applications is to execute services that are invoked by the composite application's Web pages.



Business Process Management

A business process is a series of business activities that are performed in a specific order, by a variety of applications, systems, employees, and external businesses, according to defined business rules. Examples of business processes include handling a purchase order from receipt through fulfillment, taking a product from inception to market, and preparing for a new employee. Business processes are more complex and long-running than integration solutions and can include activities performed by humans.

Business process management enables you to automate business processes. For example, the process of preparing for a new employee could be automated as follows:

1 The hiring manager submits an online form that contains information about the new employee.

2 The submission of the form triggers the first step in the process. This step adds the employee's information to the internal human resources (HR) database and registers the employee in various systems and applications, such as the enterprise's e-mail application.

3 The next step in the process uses the enterprise's trading network to notify the external payroll company to set up an account for the employee.

4 The next step sends the facilities department a task to assign office space and provide office equipment before the employee's start date.

Business processes typically involve many variables and conditions, and the longer they run, the more likely the variables and conditions are to change. For example, a supplier might temporarily run out of parts needed to fill orders. Business process management enables you to act on running processes in response to such changes; in the example above, you could suspend order fulfillment processes until parts are available again.

The primary webMethods product you use to design business processes is Designer. You might also use Blaze Advisor and CentraSite. The webMethods products you use to execute business processes are Integration Server, webMethods Broker, and My webMethods Server.

Designer

Designer is an Eclipse-based graphical development tool that offers a Business Process Development perspective for designing business processes.

You create a business process in Designer by dragging and dropping graphical representations of process steps onto a design canvas, then configuring each step to perform a specific function. For example, process steps can:

Receive data. Data can be in the form of documents from webMethods products, JMS messages, EDA events, and output data from Web services and services such as database query services.

Invoke rules.



Invoke services such as Flow services, Web services, rule services, and adapter services that in turn invoke programs on mainframes and UNIX systems.

Invoke other business processes.

Publish data for other business processes and services to consume.

Publish EDA events.

Define the way data passes through and is handled by your business processes. You define the order of steps in your processes, and the conditions under which they start, run, pass data, and end. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) provides a graphical representation of the underlying model and of the functionality and behavior of its steps.

Send activities, called tasks, to a human or group of humans to perform. Tasks in turn can invoke rules, rule sets, and services.

The illustration below shows a business process in Designer.

Service Development

You can develop services such as Flow, Web, and adapter services within Designer using the Service Development perspective.



After you develop the services, you can drag and drop them onto the business process design canvas from Integration Server. In a collaborative design environment, you can also drag and drop assets from CentraSite. CentraSite operates as a shared SOA registry/repository of metadata about assets that were developed in Designer and that are stored on run-time servers such as Integration Server.

Rules Development

You develop business rules within Designer using the Business Rules Development perspective. Rules can be expressed as decision tables or event rules. Rules can invoke services, and can operate on processes (for example, rules can start or stop, or suspend or resume processes) and tasks (for example, rules can assign tasks to users).

A decision table is made up of rows and columns, and each row defines a rule. A rule includes one or more condition columns and one or more result columns. For example, a decision table for health care insurance premiums could include a rule that specifies condition columns for gender, age, and smoker/non-smoker, and a result column that contains premiums to be paid.

An event rule consists of an event and one or more results. A result can assign a value or execute an action. For example, an event rule for an automobile parts distributor could specify that when inventory on parts decreases to certain levels, the event rule creates a data action. This data action creates data that is evaluated by rules in a decision table. Depending on the content of the new data, one of the rules in the decision table fires. Some of the rules launch a business process to replenish the stock in a result column.

You can group multiple decision tables and event rules into a rule set, and invoke the rule set from a process step or task. The rules in a rule set interact with each other, so that the conclusion drawn from one rule (the result) is used as input information (the condition) for a second rule. This is called forward chaining. In the example above for the automobile parts distributor, the event rule and the decision table could be grouped into a rule set. The illustration below shows the decision table and event rule in the rule set named LowInventoryRuleSet.



After you develop rules in Designer, you can drag and drop them onto the business process design canvas. In a collaborative design environment, you can also drag and drop assets from CentraSite. CentraSite operates as a shared SOA registry/repository of metadata about assets that were developed in Designer and that are stored on run-time servers such as Integration Server and My webMethods Server.

You export rules developed in Designer to Integration Servers equipped with a Rules Engine for execution. Each Rules Engine execute the rules that it hosts when those rules are invoked by process steps or tasks.

Business administrators can make simple changes to rules that have been developed in Designer through the business rules browser-based user interface. Developers export the rules that business administrators want to edit to the My webMethods Server content repository. The business administrator edits the rules in the browser-based user interface and then redeploys the rules to the appropriate Rules Engines.

You can also develop rules in Blaze Advisor. For detailed information, see “Blaze Advisor” on page 30.

Task Development

You design tasks (that is, activities performed by humans as part of a business process) as specialized composite applications within Designer using the UI Development perspective. Within task applications, you design user interfaces that present the tasks to end users. You can also define actions that you want to occur in response to specified conditions. For example, you can define an action that assigns critical priority to tasks that are not completed within a specified period of time. Designer provides a variety of built-in actions the task can use, or the task can invoke a service.



The user interfaces for a task can be displayed as Web pages, in the My webMethods Server user interface. You can also deploy task user interfaces from Designer to other runtimes, such as Apache Tomcat or IBM WebSphere. The illustration below shows a task user interface.

Some tasks require the performance of multiple activities. You could construct detailed logic within a task to anticipate all possible outcomes, but such logic would be labor intensive, error prone, and difficult to maintain. Instead, you can define collaboration tasks; that is, tasks configured to operate in a collaborative work environment. You can implement collaboration tasks in these ways:

Automatic (within a collaboration process). You can configure a task so that when it receives specific business data, it creates child collaboration tasks and assigns them to specific roles or users. Suppose a satellite television company has a new order process that includes a task to install a dish and receiver. Different installation teams and equipment are required depending on the service ordered by the customer. You can configure the parent task to queue one collaboration task to the appropriate installation team and another to the appropriate equipment team based on specific information in the customer order. You can configure the parent task to complete automatically when the collaboration tasks are completed.

Manual (by a user). You can configure a task so that a user who opens the task in his inbox can create child collaboration tasks and assign them to other users to help complete the parent task. Suppose a support person from a magazine company receives a task to resolve a customer complaint that issues of a magazine have stopped arriving. The support person could create and assign collaboration tasks to the database administrator and the circulation manager that request information needed to determine the problem.

You can use business rules to assign tasks to users.



Integration Server

Integration Server has several functions in business process management.

Run-time logic for process steps developed in Designer is created on Integration Server. Integration Server executes business processes and process steps. Every Integration Server that runs process steps is equipped with a Process Engine that controls and directs process execution.

Services such as Flow, Web, and adapter services that are developed in Designer are built on Integration Server. Integration Server executes the services when they are invoked by process steps or tasks.

Rules developed in theDesigner Business Rules Development perspective are exported to Integration Servers equipped with a Rules Engine. The Rules Engines execute the rules when they are invoked by process steps or tasks.

Rules developed in Blaze Advisor are deployed to Integration Server, which generates the rules as Blaze rule services. Integration Server executes Blaze rule services that are invoked by process steps or tasks.

If a process step exchanges documents with an external trading partner, the step sends the document to Integration Server, which sends the document to the partner. The partner returns a document to Integration Server, which returns the document to the process so it can continue to its next step.

webMethods Broker

To improve performance and reliability, you can distribute process steps across multiple Integration Servers. In this case the Integration Servers must connect to a webMethods Broker that routes the process data across Integration Servers.


My webMethods Server has two functions in business process management:



Execution of tasks. Designer publishes tasks applications, to My webMethods Server, where they are invoked by processes at run time. Each My webMethods Server that runs tasks is equipped with a Task Engine that controls and directs task execution. At run time, data and control pass from Process Engines to Task Engines and back again until the business process completes. If you published task user interfaces to other runtimes such as Apache Tomcat, JBoss, Oracle WebLogic, and IBM WebSphere, the task still runs on My webMethods Server, and interacts with the task user interface through Task Engine Web services.

Hosting of composite applications that provide the user interfaces for webMethods Broker and tasks, and the user interfaces for editing rules developed in Designer or Blaze Advisor.

SOA Governance

Service oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style in which development groups within an enterprise create and maintain services and related artifacts in accordance with defined standards of quality, consistency, and interoperability. The enterprise maintains the services in a registry and exposes them to consumers within the enterprise. Service consumers, such as developers or process designers, can combine and reuse the services to more quickly and easily create a variety of business applications.

Services in an SOA are distributed over a network, and are often made available to client applications through a mediation layer. The mediation layer provides a layer of abstraction that prevents client applications from having to know where the services are running or which languages, technologies, or platforms were used in their development. The mediation layer receives requests from client applications and forwards them to the service provider, and then returns responses from the service provider to the client applications.

The webMethods products you use to support SOA governance are CentraSite and Mediator.

CentraSite

CentraSite provides the infrastructure you need for design-time and run-time governance of your SOA.

For design-time governance, CentraSite provides a registry, or catalog, in which service providers can register re-usable assets such as services, XML schemas, and event types. Service providers can also register assets that are customized for your environment, such as reusable Java libraries, BPEL documents, and portlets. The CentraSite catalog is an implementation of the Java API for XML Registries (JAXR) specification, and is UDDI v2- and UDDI v3-compliant. CentraSite provides a browser-based user interface that lets service providers submit services to the catalog, and lets developers browse the catalog for services to use. The illustration below shows the CentraSite service catalog.



CentraSite can but does not have to store the asset itself in the catalog. A catalog entry might simply describe an asset or indicate its availability. The actual asset itself might reside elsewhere in your enterprise.

Designer can register services and other assets with the CentraSite catalog, and integration solutions built in Designer can incorporate services from the CentraSite catalog.

You can control design-time events such as the acceptance of new assets into the catalog and the modification of existing assets in the catalog through policies. For example, you could define a policy that new services submitted to the catalog must be approved by specified individuals like SOA architects. You can also use policies to define review and approval processes, perform quality assurance tests, and issue notifications when new services are added to the catalog or when the interfaces for existing services are about to be modified.

For run-time governance, CentraSite enables you to define security, audit logging, SLA monitoring, and routing policies that control the use of services in the catalog. Policies specify actions the mediation layer is to perform when a client application requests a service. For example, actions can prevent unauthorized access to a service, route a request to the appropriate service, record events to a logging system, or monitor performance attributes and send alerts when specified thresholds are exceeded. The illustration below shows a policy definition in CentraSite.



Mediator

Mediator does the following:

Mediates between consumer applications and service providers. Mediator receives requests for services from consumer applications and forwards them to service providers, then returns responses from service providers to consumer applications.

Enforces policies. Mediator makes sure that requests from and responses to consumer applications conform to service policies defined in CentraSite.

Transforms requests. Mediator transforms requests from and responses to consumer applications according to transformation steps defined in CentraSite.

Routes requests. Mediator can use request context or content to route requests from consumers to different service endpoints, or to load balance requests.

Mediator runs on Integration Server.

Collaborative Development

The webMethods product suite offers a variety of tools and methods you can use to create a collaborative development environment in which developers can easily share and reuse assets.



A main tool for collaboration is CentraSite, which operates as a shared database of metadata about assets that are stored in Designer, Integration Server, and CentraSite.

Integration solution developers can publish services and document types from Designer to CentraSite, and can drag and drop these assets from CentraSite into Designer.

Composite applications developers can publish services, webMethods document types, and composite applications from Designer to CentraSite, and can drag and drop these assets from CentraSite into Designer.

Business process developers can publish services, webMethods document types, and business processes from Designer to CentraSite, and can drag and drop these assets from CentraSite into Designer.

Task application developers can define child collaboration tasks and processes that help complete a parent task. Developers can configure a parent task so that:

When the task receives specific business data, it creates child collaboration tasks and assigns them to specific roles or users. The task application developer can configure the parent task to complete automatically when the collaboration tasks are completed.

A user who opens the task in his inbox can create child collaboration tasks and assign them to other users. When the child tasks are completed, the user can complete the parent task.

In My webMethods Server, users can create workspaces that appear in My webMethods. A workspace is a page that holds information relating to a specific issue or topic. You might use a workspace to:

Group information and tools you use frequently. For example, if you are responsible for handling new hires for your company, you could create a workspace for each new employee. In each workspace, you could attach an image of and documents relating to the new employee, and add reminders of actions you still need to take, such as sending the new employee a reminder to attend an orientation session.

Troubleshoot an issue with other users. You could share the workspace with the other users, and add tools to facilitate discussions.

Organize the work you need to do for tasks. You could display your task inbox in My webMethods, search for specific tasks, and add the search results to a workspace. You could then add tools or windows from application pages that you need to accomplish the tasks.

For more information on tools and methods you can use to create a collaborative development environment, contact Software AG Global Consulting Services.



Business Activity Monitoring

Business activity monitoring enables an enterprise to monitor the performance of the system resources and business processes it uses to deliver goods and services. Business optimization enables an enterprise to use the monitoring information to proactively manage and optimize those system resources and business processes.

System resource and business process data is monitored via key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs are quantifiable measurements that reflect the critical success factors of an enterprise. For example, in an order management process, you might define KPIs to monitor the number of orders received, their monetary amounts, and whether they were processed successfully. KPIs monitor data for exceptions and trends and help you create solutions.

The webMethods products you use for business activity monitoring are Optimize, Monitor, webMethods Reporting, and MashZone.

Optimize

Optimize enables you to monitor the following in real time:

System resources, such as webMethods products, third-party applications, databases, equipment such as printers and disk drives, and devices such as routers and network servers (Optimize for Infrastructure)

Business processes (Optimize for Process)

SAP business events (Optimize for SAP)

Transactions between trading partners in Trading Networks (Optimize for B2B)

Mainframe-based system resources such as Adabas, Natural, EntireX, and ApplinX servers (Optimize for ETS)

Optimize uses the monitoring data it collects to help you quickly identify problem areas and analyze trends so you can improve performance, eliminate issues, and take advantage of business opportunities. The data is displayed in the browser-based Optimize and Optimize for B2B user interfaces.

For business processes, Optimize can use Six Sigma. Six Sigma helps you systematically improve business processes by measuring the number of defects in a process and enabling you to focus on the most important issues. After Optimize has learned enough about your enterprise, it can predict problems and opportunities so you can act preemptively.

With Optimize, you define the KPIs that reflect the critical success factors of your enterprise. For system resources, KPIs might include Integration Server thread availability and webMethods Broker queue lengths. For business processes, KPIs might include margin, revenue, customer satisfaction, and inventory levels. For Trading Networks, KPIs might include order and invoice volumes, average order amount, and percentage of successful and failed transactions.



For system resources, you gather KPI readings at specified intervals using Optimize data collectors, as indicated below. webMethods Broker routes the KPI readings from the data collectors to Optimize.

For business processes, you specify KPIs when designing the process in Designer. At run time, webMethods Broker routes the KPI readings from the Process Engines that execute the business process steps to Optimize. For SAP business events, you use the webMethods SAP Adapter to extract process data (such as the start and end time of a process instance), error data, or business data (such as customers, order quantities, and revenues) from a running SAP process, and to send the extracted data Optimize for business monitoring and analysis.

You then establish rules in Optimize to define conditions that indicate problems with your system resources or business processes. Examples of problems are when Integration Server thread availability falls below 20%, or when the processing time for a shipping process is two standard deviations above normal. Optimize compares KPI readings against the rules you define and detects whether a monitored system resource or business process is out of compliance. Optimize displays the results in the browser-based Optimize user interface. Optimize also measures current KPIs against KPIs gathered over time and displays trends in its user interface (for example, whether your revenue is trending upward or downward, and whether that trend is typical or atypical). Optimize can send alerts to users you identify, who can then act to correct negative trends, and take advantage of positive trends. The illustration below shows memory consumption for a specific server and the points (red dots) at which the memory consumption deviated from normal behavior.

Data Collector Gathers this data...

Infrastructure Data Collector

System resource and operational data for webMethods run-time products (Adabas servers, Natural servers, ApplinX servers, EntireX servers, Integration Servers, webMethods Broker, Trading Networks, and adapters). Infrastructure Data Collector is pre-configured with KPIs to collect specific data for those products. It also supports user-defined KPIs.

Operational data for devices such as bridges, hubs, routers, and network servers that are accessible through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agents.

Web Service Data Collector

Operational data about applications or equipment in your enterprise (such as databases, printers, or disk drives).



Optimize includes a business process dashboard that lets you manage processes, investigate root causes behind process problems, and gain insight into general process behavior. The process dashboard is the primary tool you use to optimize your business processes. The illustration below shows the process dashboard.



The following are examples of ways an enterprise can use Optimize.

A highly-decentralized food distribution company could use Optimize to monitor the health and performance of its servers and applications. The company uses Optimize to alert users to probable system outages. In most cases, staff avoids actual system outages by making adjustments based on Optimize's root cause analysis.

A multi-national consumer electronics company could use Optimize to monitor a partially-outsourced manufacturing process. The company identifies the critical steps in the process, creates KPIs to monitor the steps, and defines rules that send alerts about operational abnormalities. Rather than having to continually compute and adjust alert thresholds, the company depends on Optimize's ability to learn what is normal.

A satellite television company could use Optimize to correlate subscription events so it can identify customers that might be cheating the billing system. By collecting, filtering, and correlating thousands of subscription events, Optimize narrows down the potential problem accounts into a manageable list.

Monitor

Monitor reads run-time data that webMethods products such as Integration Servers and Process Engines log for services, business processes, business events, and documents. The data is displayed in the browser-based Monitor user interface. Typical logged data includes service or business process start date and time, status, duration, successful



completion or failure, and errors. You can take action based on the logged data from the Monitor user interface; for example, you can resubmit services, business processes, and documents, and suspend and resume business processes.

Monitor also offers a public API so you can build your own front-end application for displaying and working with the logged data.

webMethods Reporting

webMethods Reporting retrieves stored webMethods data and displays it in report form in the browser-based Reporting user interface. These reports help you monitor and manage various aspects of system performance. Software AG provides the predefined report formats listed below, but you can also generate your own reports.

Report Name Data

Monitor Business process execution metrics.

Optimize Key performance indicators (KPIs) for system resources and business processes.

Trading Networks B2B transactions and trading partners.

Optimize for B2B Trading Networks document types and attributes that are monitored by Optimize for B2B.



MashZone

MashZone is a browser-based application that enables you to analyze and visualize data from distributed data sources. It provides a framework for creating user interface dashboards based on data obtained from various data sources, such as URLs, XML files, and Excel spreadsheets. For KPIs, Optimize provides a query you can paste into MashZone to create real-time dashboards.

System Administration Tools

System administration tools include the Software AG Installer, the Software AG Update Manager, database scripts and the Database Component Configurator, and Deployer.

Software AG Installer

The Software AG Installer is an application that enables you to install, upgrade, and uninstall the webMethods product suite. The installer offers a wizard in both GUI and command line modes that guides you through each of those activities. The illustration below shows the product selection tree list in the Software AG Installer GUI.



In addition to installing using the wizard or command line mode, you can create an installation script and run it on multiple machines to create identical installations. You can download webMethods products into an installation image and give the image to users who cannot go outside your corporate firewall to install from.

Software AG Update Manager

The Software AG Update Manager is an application that enables you to install and uninstall fixes to Software AG products. The Update Manager offers both GUI and command line modes that guide you through each of those activities.

You can install fixes directly from the Empower Product Support Web site, or you can download fixes into a fix image and give the image to users who cannot go outside your corporate firewall to install from. You can create a fix script of installing from Empower or an image, and run that script on multiple machines that have identical product installations.



The illustration below shows the list of actions you can perform using the Update Manager GUI.

Database Scripts and the Database Component Configurator

webMethods provides database scripts you can use to create, migrate, or drop the database components you need to store webMethods product suite data. webMethods also offers the Database Component Configurator for performing those tasks. The configurator is an application that offers a GUI and a command line mode. The illustration below shows the configurator in GUI mode.



Deployer and the Asset Build Environment

Deployer is a graphical tool that lets you deploy assets developed in the webMethods product suite from one environment to another. For example, you might want to deploy business processes on webMethods servers in a development environment (that is, source servers) to webMethods servers in a test or production environment (that is, target servers). The illustration below shows a deployment project containing assets to be deployed.



You use Deployer for run-time deployment, and Deployer and the Asset Build Environment for repository-based deployment.

In run-time deployment, you connect Deployer to source servers in one environment and deploy assets that reside on those source servers to target servers in another environment.

In repository-based deployment, you do not have to connect Deployer to source servers. Instead, you use the Asset Build Environment to build definitions of source server assets onto a repository, then connect Deployer to the repository and deploy the assets to the target servers.


2 Administering the webMethods Product Suite

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Installing or Uninstalling webMethods Products and Fixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Upgrading Products and Migrating Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Creating or Dropping Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Configuring Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Monitoring System Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Monitoring and Managing Services and Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Deploying Assets from One Environment to Another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Scaling the webMethods Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57



Overview

This chapter provides a high-level description of the products a system administrator uses and the activities a system administrator performs to administer the webMethods product suite.

Installing or Uninstalling webMethods Products and Fixes

Use the Software AG Installer to install and uninstall webMethods products for end users. Also use the Software AG Installer to update installed webMethods products with new product components, such as new packages or plug-ins.

Use the Software AG Update Manager to install and uninstall fixes to webMethods products.

Guides

Using the Software AG Installer

Installing webMethods Products

Using the Software AG Update Manager

Upgrading Products and Migrating Data

Use the upgrade documentation to upgrade webMethods products when new releases come out and to migrate webMethods product data.

Guide

Upgrading webMethods Products

Creating or Dropping Databases

Use database scripts or the Database Component Configurator to create and drop storage and database users, and to create and drop webMethods database components. A webMethods database component is a grouping of database objects that can be used by one or more webMethods products.

Use webMethods product interfaces to connect webMethods products to each other and to webMethods database components.



Guide

Installing webMethods Products

Configuring Products

Configuration activities such as the following are necessary for most products:

Manage users, groups, and roles.

Manage external directory services.

Set up calendars for use by processes and tasks.

Set up logging.

Set up clustering.

Guides

Go to the Software AG Documentation Web site > webMethods Product Suite > webMethods Product Suite 8.2 > Documentation by Task > Configuring and Administering page for the guides that discuss this topic.

Monitoring System Resources

Setting Up System Resource Monitoring

Use Optimize to monitor many webMethods products, as follows:

Identify webMethods products for which the Optimize Infrastructure Data Collector is to collect data.

Identify applications and equipment in your enterprise (for example, databases, printers, and disk drives) for which the Optimize Web Service Data Collector is to collect data.

Configure KPIs to monitor the collected data.

Define rules for Optimize to use to evaluate collected KPI readings and notify you when a problem resource requires your attention. Optimize provides predefined rules to help you get up and running quickly.

Define actions you want Optimize to take automatically when a problem arises.

Use the My webMethods Server diagnostic tools to monitor My webMethods Server. Diagnostic tools include:



1 A command line tool for monitoring My webMethods Server logs, traffic, file system, network connectivity, database connectivity, and other critical metrics.

2 A GUI tool for monitoring My webMethods Server memory, logs, performance, thread dumps, performance statistics, and SOAP messages.

Analyzing System Resource Monitoring Data

Use Optimize to view and analyze monitoring data, as follows:

Find resources that out of compliance and view information about the rules that were violated.

View a high-level summary of all resources and the performance of the entire enterprise.

Compare the performance of different KPIs for resources and analyze historical KPI performance to find positive or negative trends.

View alerts about resources that are likely to go out of compliance in the future.

View reports about KPIs for system resources.

Guides

Working with My webMethods

Administering webMethods Optimize

Optimizing BPM and System Resources with BAM: webMethods Optimize User’s Guide

Diagnosing My webMethods Server

Monitoring and Managing Services and Documents

Use the Monitor user interface to monitor and manage documents and services that are running throughout the enterprise. You can view logged audit data for documents and services, including logged errors, and you can resubmit documents and services.

If you want to monitor services that are running on a single Integration Server only, you can use the Integration Server Administrator user interface for that Integration Server. From that interface, you can view logged audit data for services, including errors, but you cannot resubmit services. If you want to resubmit services, you must use the Monitor user interface.

Guides

Administering webMethods Integration Server

webMethods Audit Logging Guide



Working with My webMethods

Monitoring BPM, Services, and Documents with BAM: webMethods Monitor User’s Guide

webMethods Monitor Built-In Services Reference

Deploying Assets from One Environment to Another

You use Deployer for run-time asset deployment, and Deployer and the Asset Build Environment for repository-based asset deployment.

In run-time deployment, you connect Deployer to source servers in one environment and deploy assets that reside on those source servers to target servers in another environment.

In repository-based deployment, you do not have to connect Deployer to source servers. Instead, you use the Asset Build Environment to build definitions of source server assets onto a repository, then connect Deployer to the repository and deploy the assets to the target servers.

Guide

Deploying webMethods Assets: webMethods Deployer User’s Guide

Scaling the webMethods Environment

You can scale the webMethods product suite to support global deployments and enterprise-level transaction volumes. You can deploy products incrementally, adding them when and where you need them.

Integration Server Clustering

You can improve service and business process performance significantly by clustering Integration Servers using a third-party load balancer. Clustering distributes requests across Integration Servers. The load balancer receives all client application requests and routes each to the Integration Server whose processing load is the lowest at that moment.

Mediator Clustering

If Integration Servers that host Mediators are clustered, you can improve mediation and policy enforcement performance by also clustering theMediators.



Trading Networks Clustering

If Integration Servers that host Trading Networks Servers are clustered, you can synchronize Trading Networks data cached in memory, user accounts, and properties by also clustering theTrading Networks Servers.

My webMethods Server Clustering

You can improve composite application performance by clustering My webMethods Server. You can partition applications among nodes of a cluster and then use load balancer rules to route each user to nodes that host only the applications that user is allowed to access.

Optimize Clustering

Optimize offers high-availability clustering for its Analytic Engines. A typical approach is to cluster two Analytic Engines in an active-active configuration in which processing is distributed across both engines. If one engine fails, the other takes over all processing for both engines. When the failed engine is restored, processing is redistributed across both engines.

webMethods Broker Clustering

In webMethods Broker, components named Brokers execute requests for clients and maintain information about clients and their document types. You can improve messaging availability and reliability by clustering Brokers. webMethods Broker offers two types of clustering: policy based and high availability.

Policy-Based Clustering

With policy-based clustering, clustered Brokers share client information and document types. Client requests are distributed across the clustered Brokers according to policies you configure. Policies can improve scalability, reliability, or both.

Policies that improve scalability (that is, load-balancing policies) are as follows:

Policy Description

Round robin

Client requests are distributed to all Brokers in the cluster in a prescribed order and to all Brokers equally.

Weighted round robin

Client requests are distributed to Brokers in the cluster in a prescribed order, but to some Brokers more frequently than to others (for example, more frequently to Brokers on machines with greater hardware capacity).

Random Client requests are distributed to Brokers in the cluster equally but in no particular order.



Policies that improve reliability are:

You can combine policies (for example, you might combine a multi-send policy with a round robin policy). You can configure forwarding of messages from one cluster to another.

Changes in policy or cluster configuration are automatically propagated to clients, which immediately incorporate the change without the need for human interaction.

High-Availability Clustering

webMethods Broker also offers support for high-availability configurations using third-party operating system- or hardware-based clustering solutions. These solutions provide redundancy of Broker storage. They provide automatic fail over of Broker processes to a backup server in the event of aBroker failure; clients reconnect to the backup server automatically and no messages are lost.

Guides

Go to the Software AG Documentation Web site > webMethods Product Suite > webMethods Product Suite 8.2 > Documentation by Task > Configuring and Administering page for the guides that discuss this topic, as follows:

webMethods Integration Server Clustering Guide

Administering webMethods Mediator

Building B2B Integrations: webMethods Trading Networks Administrator’s Guide

Administering My webMethods Server

Configuring BAM

Administering webMethods Broker, Running webMethods Broker in a High-Availability UNIX Cluster, Running webMethods Broker in a High-Availability Windows Enterprise Server Cluster

Sticky All client requests are passed to the first Broker in the cluster. If the first Broker fails, subsequent messages are sent to the next Broker in the cluster.

Policy Description

Multi-send best effort

Client requests are distributed to as many Brokers in the cluster as possible up to a maximum you configure, and a request transaction succeeds if least one Broker receives the request.

Multi-send guaranteed

Client requests are distributed to the number of Brokers in the cluster that you specify, and a request transaction succeeds only if every one of those Brokers receives the request.

Policy Description


3 Developing Integration Solutions

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Developing an Integration Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Implementation Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65



Overview

This chapter provides a high-level description of the products a developer uses and the activities a developer performs to develop an integration solution.

Products

Designer

CentraSite

Integration Server

Trading Networks

Adapters

webMethods Broker

Monitor

Developing an Integration Solution

The primary elements in integration solutions are services, so the main product you use to develop your integration solutions is Designer. You can develop most integration services using the webMethods Flow language, although you can also use Designer to develop services in Java.

Flow language lets you wrap a sequence of services within a single service, called a Flow service, and manage the flow of data among them. For example, you might create a Flow service that receives employee address change data from a composite application and executes services that do the following:

1 Enter the address change in an employee benefits application.

2 Invoke the JDBC Adapter to enter the address change in an HR database.

3 Invoke Trading Networks to send the change to an external payroll company.

4 Log confirmation that the resources have been updated to an audit log file.

Designer has extensive data mapping capabilities that allow you to drag and drop data fields from service to service. You can also specify that a Flow service should branch to different services based on a real-time value.

When you develop a service in Designer, you specify the inputs and outputs for the service. You can create document types to define the service's inputs and outputs. Document types are reusable; that is, if two services have identical inputs, you can use the same document type to specify the inputs for both services.



When working in Designer, you are always connected to an Integration Server; Designer builds and edits services directly on the Integration Server. Integration Server comes with a library of built-in services that you can use in your integration solutions. In addition, Designer can connect to an SOA registry such as CentraSite; you can browse the available Web services and use them in your integration solutions.

If an integration solution must interact with an application for which webMethods provides an adapter, you can create services that invoke services in the adapter. For example, an integration solution that needs to enter data in a database could include services that invoke JDBC Adapter services that insert or delete data.

You can chain any type of services to form a simple integration process.

Service development is an iterative process of building, testing, and correcting (debugging) your code. Designer provides a range of tools to assist you during the testing and debugging phases. You can test services with input values you specify manually, inspect the results, and investigate errors. You can run services in "debug" mode, which enables you to monitor a Flow service's execution path.

Multiple Designer users can collaborate on an integration solution, developing different pieces of the integration solution and then deploying the pieces to a single Integration Server for testing. Designer enables you to lock objects you are working with, and can interact with a third-party version control system (VCS) repository.

You can set up audit logging for services and documents so the system administrator can find and handle problems. If you chained services to form an integration process, you can set up audit logging for that as well.

Implementation Examples

You can implement integration solutions in a wide variety of ways. Below are some examples.

Synchronization

Suppose you want to synchronize customer information between Siebel and a mainframe program. You set up the Siebel Adapter to interact with the Siebel application and the EntireX Adapter to interact with the mainframe program.

To get data from Siebel to the mainframe program, you have the Siebel Adapter monitor the Siebel application for new or changed data. The adapter transforms the data from Siebel's proprietary format into webMethods internal format and passes it to Integration Server. Integration Server processes the data and then passes it to the EntireX Adapter, which transforms it into the mainframe program's format and inserts it into the system. To get data from the mainframe program to Siebel, you use the same process, in reverse.



Propagation

Suppose you want HR people to change employee information using a composite application, and you want to propagate the changes to the HR database, the employee benefits application, and the retirement plan mainframe program. You develop the following:

A composite application in Designer that provides a user interface for entering employee information, and passes data entered on the form to Integration Server for processing.

A synchronous service that receives the data from Integration Server, simultaneously invokes the three services described below, waits for confirmation from the three services, and then returns the confirmation to the composite application to display to the user.

A JDBC Adapter service and two other services that insert the data into the database, mainframe program, and benefits application, respectively, and return confirmations to the synchronous service described above.

Composition

Suppose HR wants to create reports containing employee information from the HR database, the retirement plan mainframe program, and the employee benefits application. You want to use webMethods Broker and its publish-subscribe model to route the information. You develop the following:

A composite application in Designer that provides a user interface for requesting the report, publishes the request to webMethods Broker, and displays the returned data in report form to the user.

A synchronous JDBC Adapter service to extract data from the database.

Two synchronous services that extract data from the mainframe program and the benefits application.



An asynchronous Flow service that wraps the three services described above and maps the data from service to service.

A trigger on Integration Server that subscribes to the report request on webMethods Broker and invokes the Flow service when Integration Server receives the request.

Guides

Go to the Software AG Documentation Web site > webMethods Product Suite > webMethods Product Suite 8.2 > Documentation by Task > Developing Integration Solutions page for the guides that discuss this topic.


4 Designing Business Processes

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

High-Level Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Detailed Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72



Overview

This chapter provides a high-level description of the products a business process developer uses and the activities a business process developer performs to design a business process.

Designer offers perspectives for designing business processes, as follows: Process Development, Process Debugging, Process Simulation, Service Development, and UI Development. The Process Development perspective also offers a Business Analyst capability. A major feature of Designer is its collaborative focus, which allows users with different types of expertise to work together on different aspects of a process. Each of these perspectives supplies the tools needed by a particular category of users.

Products

Designer

Business Rules

Blaze Advisor

webMethods Broker

Trading Networks

Integration Server

CentraSite


Content Service Platform

Task Engine

Optimize

High-Level Design

The Business Analyst capability in the Process Development perspective allows an expert in your company's procedures and business rules to design a business process without having to get involved in developing the underlying technology. This capability offers a wide range of graphical representation and documentation tools.

The Business Analyst capability lets you focus on architecting the high-level design of a business process and explaining the process to other team members. You define the steps in the business process, rules that dictate the order of the steps, and rules that specify the circumstances under which each step should run. You can use swimlanes to identify the departments that are responsible for performing each step.



You can document the requirements of the business process to help guide the other team members. For example, you can:

Specify the input each process step requires and the output each process step should produce.

Identify humans who are involved in the process (for example, a facilities manager, to set up office space).

Specify how to handle errors.

List KPIs to track so you can measure the effectiveness of the process (for example, the period of time it took to set up the office space).

Detailed Implementation

Configuring Process Steps

The Process Development perspective offers an extensive set of programming tools that enable a technical user to focus on the detailed implementation of a business process. You receive a new process, as designed and documented by the Business Analyst capability user, and you work in the Process Development perspective to configure the pieces of the process. For example, you configure steps to:

Subscribe to business documents on webMethods Broker, or publish business documents to webMethods Broker.

Invoke integration services or Web services.

Invoke rules, tasks, other business processes, or Trading Networks.

You define the way data passes through and is handled by your business processes. You define the order of steps in your processes, and the conditions under which they start, run, pass data, and end. Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) provides a graphical representation of the underlying model and of the functionality and behavior of its steps.

Creating Documents, Services, Tasks, and Rules

webMethods products provide data to processes in the form of documents. Each webMethods document is associated with a document type, a schema-like definition that describes the document's structure. For example, a document type named PurchaseOrder might describe the structure of data in a purchase order document.

In Designer, you can identify existing document types, services, tasks, and rules, or you can create the document types, services, tasks, and rules required by a business process, as follows:

Browse Integration Servers for existing document types and services, and drag and drop them onto the design canvas.



Browse CentraSite for document types, services, tasks, rules, and business processes, and reference these assets from process steps.

Import supported electronic form (e-form) templates from a file system folder, a Web server, a My webMethods Server configured as a JSR-170 content repository, or a Content Service Platform repository. Designer converts the imported templates into Integration Server document types.

Use Designer's Service Development perspective to develop Flow services and create document types for service inputs and outputs.

Use Designer's UI Development perspective to develop tasks (see “Developing Tasks” on page 70, below).

Use the Designer's Rules Development perspective to develop rules.

Launch Blaze Advisor so you can develop Blaze rule services.

If you are working in a collaborative design environment, publish assets you develop in Designer to CentraSite.

Developing Tasks

If a business process you are developing includes human activities, you use Designer's UI Development perspective to develop tasks. Tasks are created within a special type of composite application called task application projects. You can create a single task within a project, or you can group multiple related tasks within a project.

Within task applications, you design user interfaces that present the tasks to end users. You can also define how you want a task to behave when certain events occur. For example, you can specify that the task status should change to Critical when an uncompleted task reaches its expiration date. Designer provides a variety of built-in actions you can use, or you can use a service. You can use any of the methods listed in “Detailed Implementation” on page 69 to invoke services from tasks.

You can preview the task user interfaces you create within Designer and adjust them as necessary. You can also run tasks in Designer to test their behavior. You can debug tasks, test them again, and so on, until the tasks meet your requirements.

You can create a task application that uses data from a supported e-form as some or all of the task's business data. You can also implement e-form-enabled tasks with download and upload capability. This capability lets the task user:

Connect to My webMethods Server or the Content Service Platform to download the e-form data from the task in its original e-form format.

Disconnect from My webMethods Server or the Content Service Platform and work with the e-form in the local environment.

Reconnect to My webMethods Server or the Content Service Platform and upload the e-form. My webMethods Server applies the modifications to the task business data.



After you create a task, you can drag and drop it onto a business process. When you are done developing the process, you use Designer to deploy the tasks to My webMethods Server, so the process can invoke the tasks at run time.

The user interfaces you create in the task application can appear to end users in the browser-based task user interface. Most tasks are pre-assigned, using business logic contained in the task, but the task administrator can assign the tasks to individuals or roles as needed. The business administrator can define KPIs that you want Optimize to monitor for tasks.

You can also publish task user interfaces from Designer to other runtimes, such as Apache Tomcat or IBM WebSphere. The task still runs on the Task Engine, and interacts with the remote task user interface through Task Engine Web services.

Simulating and Debugging Processes

Detailed process implementation is an iterative procedure that involves developing, testing, and correcting your code. Designer's Process Simulation perspective enables you to test a process by sending a document through it. Among other things, simulation enables you to:

Discover business process bottlenecks, points of failure, and time lags.

Predict business process behavior in multiple scenarios.

Compare the behavior (performance, utilization, cost, and so on) of two or more different processes, or of two or more versions of the same process.

You can use actual historical run-time data in simulations.

You can debug the business process using the debugging tools offered by Designer's Process Debugging perspective and then simulate the process again, and so on until the process meets your requirements.

Logging and Monitoring Processes

Within each business process, you set the maximum level for audit logging for that process. The business administrator who monitors processes will refine this setting later to suit his needs. You also define quality of service settings that determine how the process executes at run time and that let you balance process performance, reliability, visibility, and control. For example, you can choose between improving performance by storing process run-time data in RAM or improving reliability by persisting the data.

Also within each process, you can define KPIs that you want Optimize to monitor.



Mapping Process Steps to Run Times

When you are done developing the business process, you work with your system administrator to map process steps to the Integration Servers (equipped with Process Engines) on which the steps should run. You then deploy the process steps from Designer to those Integration Servers. Designer creates a package containing run-time execution information on each of the Integration Servers.

Guides

Go to the Software AG Documentation Web site > webMethods Product Suite > webMethods Product Suite 8.2 > Documentation by Task > Designing BPM Processes and Suite-Integrated CAF Applications page for the guides that discuss this topic.


5 Business Administration and Monitoring

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Business Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Administering and Monitoring Trading Networks Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77



Overview

This chapter provides a high-level description of the products a business administrator uses and the activities a business administrator performs to administer, monitor, and analyze business processes and Trading Networks transactions.

Products

Monitor

Optimize

Business Rules

Blaze

Task Engine


Optimize for B2B

Trading Networks

Business Processes

Several instances of a business process or task can run at the same time. For example, your enterprise could hire several new employees at one time, and each new employee would trigger a new instance of the new employee process. For tasks, you could have a purchase order process that sends out an approval request task instance to three different managers. You administer business processes and tasks, but you monitor process instances and task instances.



Administering Business Processes

Product Activities

Monitor Enable business processes so process instances can run, disable business processes so process instances cannot run, and delete business processes.

Enable the ability for you to resubmit specific process steps when problems occur.

Define time-outs that alert you when process steps or tasks run too long.

Set up audit logging for business processes so you can track when process instances and individual process steps start running, change status, end successfully, or fail, and so you can record the path that each process instance took at run time.

Note: Audit logging for tasks occurs automatically; you do not have to set it up.

Find and view collaboration processes.

Optimize Define rules that notify you when a process instance experiences problems.

Define links that take you from process problems to external system such as a CRM.

Define KPIs so you can monitor business processes and tasks.

Business Rules

Modify rules developed in Designer and redeploy the modified rules to Integration Servers equipped with Rules Engines.

Blaze Check out, modify, and check in Blaze rules and redeploy the modified Blaze rules to Integration Server.

Task Engine Assign tasks to My webMethods users or roles.

Enable tasks so task instances can run, disable tasks so task instances cannot run, and delete tasks.

Enable or disable task monitoring for individual tasks.

Manually start a task (for example, to kick off a business process instance).



Monitoring Business Process Instances

Administering and Monitoring Trading Networks Transactions

Product Activities

Monitor Find process instance problems. Determine whether the problems are caused by system resource, service, or document problems.

View the status of all process instances, and details about individual process instances.

View an image of the process instance that mirrors the process, with a symbol next to each step that indicates its status.

Suspend a problematic process instance (for example, because an application involved in the process is not running). Resume the process later or stop it entirely. If you logged the necessary audit data, edit incorrect data values and resubmit the process instance at a particular step.

Optimize Compare the performance of different KPIs and analyze historical KPI performance to find positive or negative trends.

View KPI rules that process instances have violated, and Six Sigma information for process instances, so you can adjust business processes to avoid future problems.

Task Engine Assign task instances to users or roles.

Suspend task instances and resume them, or delete them entirely.

Reactivate tasks that have expired or have been canceled by users.


Generate reports about business process execution metrics and KPIs for business processes.

Product Activities

Optimize for B2B

Identify business document types and attributes to monitor.

Define KPIs to monitor for transactions.

Monitor transactions and other data related to exchanging data with trading partners.

Compare the performance of different KPIs and analyze historical KPI performance to find positive or negative trends.



Guides

Go to the Software AG Documentation Web site > webMethods Product Suite > webMethods Product Suite 8.2 > Documentation by Task > Monitoring BAM for BPM Processes, B2B, and System Resources page for the guides that discuss this topic.

Trading Networks

Generate reports about B2B transactions and trading partners.

Generate reports about Trading Networks document types and attributes that are monitored by Optimize for B2B.

Product Activities


6 Setting up Security

Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Setting Up Security within the webMethods Product Suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Firewall Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83



Overview

This chapter provides a high-level description of the products a security person uses and the activities a security person performs to set up security for webMethods products.

Setting Up Security within the webMethods Product Suite

You can set up the types of security listed below for products in the webMethods product suite.

For this product... You can...

ApplinX Encrypt communication between ApplinX and mainframes, Web servers, application servers, and Web service clients.

Configure user access to ApplinX data.

webMethods Broker Configure SSL, SNMP traps, the UNIX syslog, and permissions for clients to publish or subscribe to documents.

Authenticate Broker clients and servers with users in the operating system, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), or Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI). Java clients, JMS clients, C clients, C# clients, and Broker Servers can connect to an ACL-protected Broker Server using basic authentication credentials.

CentraSite Configure HTTPS, user access to CentraSite, and provider and consumer access to services.

Configure Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) or Active Directory (AD) user directories.

Configure single sign-on using the Software AG Integrated Authentication Framework (IAF).

Configure user access to CentraSite data.

EntireX Configure user authentication and client/server and publisher/subscriber authorization.

Encrypt client application data.

Configure SSL/HTTPS, including keystores and truststores, and public key infrastructure (PKI).

Integrated Authentication Framework (IAF)

Configure single sign-on for some webMethods products.

Configure authentication system (user database) for some webMethods products across operating systems.



Integration Server Configure SSL/HTTPS, including keystores and truststores, hardware security module (HSM) support, and public key infrastructure (PKI).

Configure listener ports to only accept client requests from specified addresses or domains, and define which services are accessible through each port.

Import X.509 client certificates.

Configure user access to Integration Server data.

Configure and review security-related auditing, such as number of times users log in and fail, and unauthorized access attempts.

Generate and manage certificate requests using the webMethods Certificate Toolkit.

Mediator Process signed and encrypted requests from consumers and return signed and encrypted responses.

Enforce WS-SecurityPolicy requirements on client requests to deployed services.

Receive and process SAML holder-of-key tokens issued by trusted token providers from consumers.

Configure Mediator to issue WS-trust requests and to receive SAML sender-vouches token from configured token providers (third-party STS / Default Integration Server STS).

Add WS-security user name token, X.509 token, or HTTP basic authentication token to requests before forwarding to service providers.

Process WS-addressing (WSA) headers in requests from consumers and add WSA headers to requests before forwarding to service providers.

Identify consumers based on IP address, host name, X.509 certificates, or other message-specific tokens.

Allow or deny requests from clients based on identified consumer or identified user or group name in Integration Server.

Allow or deny requests based on the presence of HTTP basic authentication credentials in the request from consumers.




Firewall Issues

Most enterprises shield their internal systems from direct Internet access through a system of inner and outer firewalls. Between the firewalls, in what is called the demilitarized zone (DMZ), they place servers that process requests from the Internet. Depending on your firewall configuration and the security policies at your enterprise, you can deploy the webMethods product suite in a number of configurations within or behind the DMZ. For example, you might deploy Integration Server in the DMZ, and then configure the inner firewall to permit traffic between Integration Server and the rest of the webMethods product suite. You might deploy My webMethods Server behind the inner firewall and use an Apache Web server in the DMZ.


Configure SSL/HTTPS, including keystores and truststores.

Connect to LDAP, Active Directory (AD), and RDBMS-based user directories.

Optimize Configure SSL/HTTPS, including keystores and truststores.

Configure user access to Optimize data.

System Management Hub

Configure SSL/HTTPS, including keystores and truststores and public key infrastructure (PKI).

Configure listener ports to only accept client communication via SSL secured.

Configure single sign-on using the Software AG Integrated Authentication Framework (IAF).

Configure different user permissions for managed products.

Trading Networks Configure PKI and import X.509 client certificates.

Configure user access to document types, processing rules, TPAs, transactions, and Trading Networks instances.

Configure partner certificates within partner profile management

All Change default passwords.

Update products with security fixes from webMethods.




Both of these configurations require opening a “hole” in the inner firewall for inbound Internet traffic. Most security administrators want to minimize the number of holes in the inner firewall because they represent potential avenues of entry for attackers. You can eliminate the need to open a hole in the inner firewall for Internet traffic by deploying Integration Servers in a unique reverse HTTP gateway configuration.

Guides

Go to the Software AG Documentation Web site > webMethods Product Suite > webMethods Product Suite 8.2 > Documentation by Task > Setting Up Security page for the guides that discuss this topic.


8-2 understanding webmethods product suite

Documents

webmethods server

webmethods products

webmethods broker

product documentation

integration server

webmethods reporting

event server

software ag andor