iKnowBase Process Services for Oracle BPEL
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iKnowBase Process Services for Oracle BPEL

The iKnowBase Process Framework for Oracle BPEL enables you to implement the business process workflow in your iKnowBase solution. The iKnowBase Process Framework works with automated processes and manual workflows.

The iKnowBase Process Framework uses the Oracle BPEL Process Manager, which is a framework used to design, deploy, monitor, and administrate business processes based on the BPEL standards.

The iKnowBase Process Framework enables you to perform the following tasks:

Define and map iKnowBase dimension structures to corresponding BPEL processes
Build user interfaces for listing manual tasks
Build user interfaces for performing manual tasks
Build user interface for viewing process logs
Configure events for automatic instantiation of processes using Oracle Advanced Queuing (AQ)

Component	Description
Oracle BPEL Server	Enables you to deploy and run BPEL processes.
iKB Process API	Enables you to retrieve metadata from the Oracle BPEL PM and to perform process operations.
iKB Service API	Enables you to process documents and metadata in iKnowBase from a BPEL process.
iKB Process Components	Enables you to build iKnowBase Applications
iKB Process Mappings	Enables you to store the mappings between the BPEL Process and iKnowBase. See chapter 7.3 for further information.
iKB Event Handler	Enables you to instantiate BPEL processes based on events in the iKnowBase Content Store.

iKB Process Components

The Process Components are building blocks that you can use on iKnowBase pages:

Task viewer: To list human tasks
Task form component and Java form portlet: To view and perform human tasks.
Process viewer portlet: To monitor process instances.

See Development Reference for further information.

iKB Process Mappings

iKnowBase Process Administration enables you to define the following:

Mapping of metadata between the BPEL process and iKnowBase.
Mapping of human tasks and task forms available for the users to perform the human tasks.

Note: A GUI for process administration is not available. The mappings must be updated directly in the database tables, see chapter 7.3.

The following database tables should be used to define the mappings between a process definition in BPEL and metadata in iKnowBase:

The BPEL_PROCESS table contains information about the deployed BPEL processes, and map them to the corresponding iKnowBase dimensions.
The BPEL_PROCESS_TASK table defines the mapping between BPEL process human tasks and task forms.
The BPEL_PROCESS_ACTIVITY table defines the mapping between BPEL process activities and dimensions. A BPEL process activity may be a human task, an automatic process step, or a call to another BPEL process, referred to as a sub-process.

BPEL_PROCESS table properties

Property	Description
OBJECT_GUID	Unique identification for the BPEL process.
DOMAIN	The Oracle BPEL domain in which the process is deployed.
PROCESS_ID	The Oracle BPEL identification of the process.
REVISION_TAG	The Oracle BPEL revision tag.
DIMENSION_GUID	The reference to the iKnowBase dimension which represents this process.

BPEL_PROCESS_TASK table properties

Property	Description
PROCESS_GUID	Reference to the BPEL process the task is part of.
OBJECT_GUID	Unique identification for the task.
TASK_NAME	The Oracle BPEL process human task name.
FORM_GUID	The reference to the task form which corresponds to the task.

BPEL_PROCESS_ACTIVITY table properties

Property	Description
PROCESS_GUID	Reference to the BPEL process the activity is part of.
OBJECT_GUID	Unique identification for the activity.
ACTIVITY_KEY	The Oracle BPEL process activity name.
ACTIVITY_TYPE	Indicates whether the activity is optional or not, may have the values OPTIONAL or REQUIRED. REQUIRED is default value.
DIMENSION_GUID	The reference to the iKnowBase dimension which corresponds to the activity.
SUB_DIMENSION_GUID	The reference to dimension which corresponds to the Oracle BPEL sub-process which are called from the activity.

iKB Event handler

Included in the iKnowBase Process Framework is a PL/SQL procedure which you can call from an event to trigger a process instance:

IKB_EVENT_FUNCTIONS.INVOKE_BPEL_PROCESS

This procedure needs one input parameter: Process ID. Define this as Param1 in the configuration of the event.
This procedure uses Oracle AQ. The necessary queues, queue tables and oracle types is included in the distribution and installed automatically when installing iKnowBase.