WebSphere Process Server delivers a unique integration framework that simplifies existing IT resources. Often, as IT assets grow to support business demand, so too does their complexity and manageability. WebSphere Process Server helps deliver an SOA infrastructure that provides one common model to orchestrate, mediate, connect, map, and execute the underlying IT functions. With this, WebSphere Process Server simplifies integration of business processes by leveraging existing IT assets as reusable services, but without the complexities associated with traditional integration methodologies. Business flexibility is achieved through standardizing, automating, and integrating key business processes and managing the performance of these processes.
IBM WebSphere® Process Server Version 6.1 delivers a rich set of features and compelling benefits:
Enhanced usability, enabling better business flexibility
Enabling easier administration and management of WebSphere Process Server is key to a successful deployment of your SOA infrastructure. New installation, configuration and profile-management enhancements increase the usability of WebSphere Process Server:
- Install Factory enhancements for defining and building WebSphere Process Server installations at a specific fix level, adding additional files to the installation and leaving out features that are not required
- Eclipse-based, profile-management tool consistent for all WebSphere platforms
- Enhanced configuration management for deployment
- Support for pattern-based configurations, improving productivity for administrators who configure WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment clusters and all required resources for WebSphere Process Server environments
Enhanced human workflow
These new features provide even more sophisticated human workflow capabilities including:
- Participant substitution capabilities that allow people to temporarily delegate work while they are unavailable
- Bulk APIs to ease transferring many tasks in a single operation
- Support for Virtual Member Manager, WebSphere Application Server's new component to integrate client-specific people directories
- Ability to optionally restrict auto deletion to tasks that completed successfully
- Ability to leverage the forms created using Lotus Forms (integrated into WebSphere Integration Developer) as the user interface for human tasks and processes
- Ability to extend WebSphere Portal Server's My Task portlet with portlets generated from WebSphere Integration Developer
Business process enhancements
- Generic JMS interface for Business Flow Manager allows for programmatic interaction with business process templates and instances.
- Extensions to the Generic Web Services Interface for Business Flow Manager.
- Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) forEach construct allows processing a dynamic number of multiple branches (either in parallel or serially).
- Extension of suspend capabilities that allow you to specify automatic resumption of process instances.
- Ability to restrict automatic deletion to processes that completed successfully enables you to keep only process instances that may need further analysis or repair.
- Additional data-handling option that ignores missing data during access instead of throwing faults.
- Support for back links in single-threaded flows.
Business rules
These new features provide greater agility and flexibility in maintaining business rules that guide a business' processes. These include:
- Extend existing custom business user clients to administer business rules used in process flows with a new Business Rules Administration API that allows for creating, reading, updating, and deleting rules as an alternative to using the Business Rules Manager.
- New custom properties can be assigned to Business Rule Groups and accessed from the rule logic of rule sets and decision tables to provide these rules with access to environment information captured in the properties. The properties can also be used for searching on Business Rule Groups through the Business Rules Manager or custom management clients.
Business Process Choreographer (BPC) Explorer and Business Process Choreographer Observer
WebSphere Process Server enhances productivity for business process administrators by providing out-of-the-box access to the functions needed to quickly and easily administer business process solutions. Enhancements to BPC Explorer leverage new WebSphere Process Server V6.1 capabilities for increased efficiency:
- Handle absence and substitution of users
- "Suspend until" option for processes and tasks
- View and edit XML source of data
- Extend custom views to support sorting and controlling the amount of data returned to users
- Fully combine more filter criteria across processes and tasks with their definitions and instances
- Navigate between related tasks (subtasks and follow-on), administer and view information about ad-hoc tasks
- Include human task priority and business category as filter criteria and list columns
- Edit custom properties
- Improve usability of graphical process view
- Reports in the BPC Observer can now be exported for further analysis in third-party tools, such as Microsoft Excel, as well as being saved for generation automatically at a later time based on schedule or on demand.
Connectivity
Reuse and connectivity are necessary for any SOA deployment to reduce cost and allow for business responsiveness and flexibility. WebSphere Process Server, Version 6.1 helps to increase the ability to connect with additional environments with increased service component architecture (SCA) bindings. It helps to:
- Enable integration with any third-party message provider that is compliant with JMS 1.1 Application Server Facilities (ASF), and support automatic setup of generic JMS resources for WebSphere Application Server.
- Enable connection with applications and services through generic HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 bindings.
- Supply data bindings for easy integration with IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender.
- Contain custom data samples with sample scenarios for export and import, fixed-width, delimited, and name-value pair formats.
- Include enhancements to business fault support, enabling differentiation between business and runtime exceptions.
- Deliver enhanced support for WSDL and XSD, enabling the use of many industry-standard XML schemas.
- Include a Business Object Instance Validator that can be invoked for either implicit, interface-qualifier-based validation or explicit, programmatic validation.
Additional ESB mediation support
Through the use of the Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) delivers leadership in SOA standards for service composition, mediation and hosting
- New Business Object Map primitive that makes it easy to embed a map inside a mediation flow
- New ServiceInvoke primitive that invokes a target service from within a request or response flow
- New splitting and aggregating primitives that allow enhanced processing of single or composite messages by splitting parts of the message and invoking multiple services
- An enhanced Custom Mediation that allows for new terminals to be defined
Platform alignment and currency
In this release, WebSphere Process Server provides the following platform alignment and currency features to maximize flexibility and lower operating costs by running on the platform that best meets your needs. They are:
- WebSphere Application Server V6.1 support allows WebSphere Process Server to leverage WebSphere Application Server, in addition to inheriting the new features and benefits that were introduced in WebSphere Application Server V6.1.
- Support for i5/OS, enabling WebSphere Process Server to run on System i to leverage native i5/OS facilities.
- Remote DB2 support for System i systems enables integration with i5/OS applications and leverages relational database management servers running on i5/OS.
- Remote access from a distributed platform to a DB2 installation on a z/OS system.
- Support for 64-bit Windows and UNIX platforms.
- Support for Windows Vista as a design, development, and test platform (not for production) enables use of Microsoft's latest version of their desktop operating system.
