ActiveVOS Designer User’s Guide

Previous | Next

Tutorial Part 1: Starting a New Process

You can use ActiveVOS 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 within a bounding box that automatically contains sequenced activities. 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.

Help Preference dialog

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 Orchestration Project

The Tutorial project is an Orchestration Project, an Eclipse project with a special nature for including the resources required for composing BPEL processes. These resources include WSDL, schema, deployment files, and other specialized resources like Service References. In addition to folders, an Orchestration Project has builders, which ensure that all orchestration files are valid, helping you to complete error-free orchestrations.

Like all projects, an orchestration project is a container to store files, and it resides in the default location, the Workspace folder selected during installation. Orchestration projects are also created in the same Workspace location in the file system.

  1. Select File>New>Orchestration Project, and click Next.
  2. Type in Tutorial for a project name, as shown.

    3. New Project dialog

  3. Click Next and select the Tutorial template, as shown.

    4. New Project-Tutorial Template dialog

  4. Click Finish.

Your Project Explorer view should look like the following illustration. Notice that several folders are created to contain the resources needed for a BPEL-based orchestration. As we proceed through the tutorial, you will be using each of these folders in the Tutorial project.

Navigator view with project

Step 2: Create a new process file in the Tutorial/bpel folder:

  1. Select File>New>BPEL Process.
  2. Select the bpel folder.
  3. In the file name field, type in tutorial for your BPEL file. The .bpel extension is automatically added.

    4. New BPEL Process dialog

  4. Skip the Advanced settings. These settings override defaults that you can set in Preferences. Also skip the next wizard page, which is for special-purpose BPEL processes.
  5. Click Finish.

Your new file opens as a blank document in the Process Editor, as shown in the following illustration.

You may notice two error messages in the Problems view. 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.

Designer user interface with annotations

Notice the following user interface features:

1

Process file are listed in the Project Explorer view. Double-click on a Project Explorer file to open it. You can drag BPEL files from the file system into a project. To do that, 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.The palette is closed by default. Rest your mouse on the palette bar to auto-open it, or select the Show Palette arrow to open it.

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 Project Explorer, 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.

Note: The Tutorial orchestration project includes a Cheat Sheet. A default project does not. The Cheat Sheet view is usually closed.

Continue to Tutorial Part 2: Planning and Designing a Process.

Copyright (c) 2004-2010 Active Endpoints, Inc.