ActiveBPEL® Designer User’s Guide
You can use ActiveBPEL to design a process using top-down or bottom-up techniques. In the top-down technique, you sketch out your process by dropping down activities and creating links between them. You then add all the necessary information to bind the activities to an implementation and add decision-making to make your sketch a working process. In the bottom-up technique, you use the definitions of the implementation that are available when you begin process creation. This tutorial covers both design techniques.
By completing Part 1 of the tutorial, you will be able to:
When you are done, go to Tutorial Part 2: Planning and Designing a Process.
Tip: Set a Help Preference to display Help in an external browser. Doing so allows you to view this tutorial at all times, especially when a modal dialog is open. To set a Help Preference, select Window>Preferences>Help. Select the check box next to Use external browser, as shown in the following illustration.
Note: The illustrations of dialog boxes and wizards (e.g., font and button color) shown in this tutorial may differ visually from the version of Eclipse that you are using.
Step 1: Create the tutorial project
A project is a folder that contains folders and files. The default location for ActiveBPEL projects is in the Workspace folder of your install folder. When you create a new project in ActiveBPEL, it is also created in the same location in the file system. A project is a required container to store files.
Your Navigator view should look like the following illustration.
Step 2: Create a new process file:
tutorial for
your BPEL file. The .bpel extension is automatically added.
Your new file opens as a blank document in the Process Editor, as shown in the following illustration.
You may notice two error messages. One says, “No activity designated to create instance.” And the other says, “Container /process is missing a required activity.” These messages are part of BPEL validation. You can ignore them for now.
Notice the following user interface features:
|
1 |
Process file are listed in the Navigator view. Double-click on a Navigator file to open it. You can drag BPEL files from the file system into a project. Select a file and drag it to the project filename. The cursor displays a + sign and you can drop the file into a project. |
|
2 |
A newly created process file is opened automatically in the Process Editor. The Process Editor canvas is blank to begin with. When you open multiple files, they are displayed as different tabs. To switch between open files, click on a tab. |
|
3 |
To create a process, you will use the palette. Each palette group contains a set of icons, such as the Activity group, displayed above. You can select a palette icon and drop it onto the canvas or draw links between objects. |
|
4 |
The Properties view displays the attributes for the object in focus. In the illustration above, the tutorial.bpel process is in focus in the Process Editor. If a file is selected in the Navigator, a different set of attributes is displayed. |
|
5 |
The tabs along the top of a view indicate that several views are stacked together. Select a tab to display a view. Tip: You can close (hide), minimize, maximize, move, and rearrange views as desired. |
Continue to Tutorial Part 2: Planning and Designing a Process.
Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Active Endpoints, Inc.