INTRODUCING DATA OBJEC TS INTO THE
BUSINESS PROCESS
Now that you have defined the data
objects, the next step is to describe how
the process activities actually work with the
data. In the SalaryRaiseApprovalProcess
window, double-click the Start activity. Click
the Implementation tab, check the Use
Associations checkbox, and click the Edit
Data Associations icon.
In the Data Associations dialog box that
appears, you should see the Start activity
on the left having access to the two input
arguments of the process (see Figure 3).
You want to associate these arguments
with the corresponding attributes of the
salaryRaiseRequest process data object.
In the right panel, expand the data object.
Drag the employeeIdentifier attribute to
the output field corresponding to the
employeeIdentifier output argument.
Follow the same steps to associate the
proposedNewSalary attribute. Click OK
twice to close each dialog box.
Next, double-click the End activity. Follow
the same steps you performed with the Start
activity to edit the data associations for this
activity. Drag the comment attribute in the
salaryRaiseRequest process data object to
the input corresponding to the comment
input argument. For the salaryRaiseAwarded
output argument, type
in the input field to derive the Boolean value
you want to assign to this argument. Click OK
twice to close each dialog box.
The process should not execute the Apply
Salary Raise activity until approval is granted
from within the human task. Apply this logic
in the flow from the exclusive gateway to the
optional activity. To do so, right-click this
flow and select Properties from the menu.
On the Properties tab, set Type to Condition.
Specify as the condition the same simple
expression used before:
defined. You’ve defined and described the
purpose of each activity. You’ve also speci-
fied each data element, and you’ve defined
how the data may influence the conditional
elements in the process. To an unsuspect-
ing business analyst, it might seem as if
you were actually done with this process.
Unfortunately, it is clearly not finished. For
each activity in the process, you still need to
specify what the activity should do and how
to implement it.
approvalOutcome == "APPROVE"
Click OK to close the editor and save your
current process.
At this stage, the process is pretty well
IMPLEMENTING THE PROCESS AC TIVI TIES
At this point in process development, the
business analyst usually starts to hand the
process over to a developer to work on the
implementation details. Note that two automated process activities are implemented
by operations in the HRDataService that will
be registered in the Oracle BPM business
catalog. The third activity is implemented by
a human task component with two possible
outcomes: APPROVE and REJECT.
Before implementation of the process
modeled above, the first technical step is to
deploy the Web service implemented by the
HRService application module in the Model
project. This Web service requires access to
the HR sample schema, so start by ensuring
that the HR database connection is valid.
Open the Application Resources panel, select
Connections and then Database, right-click
HR, and select Properties. Configure the HR
connection to suit your environment, and
click Test Connection to ensure that the
database connection is working properly.
Next, deploy the SalaryRaiseBPM application to the Oracle WebLogic Server instance,
using the HRServices deployment profile.
To do so, select the context menu for the
SalaryRaiseBPM project, select Deploy,
and select HRServices (see Figure 4). In the
Deploy dialog box that appears, select Deploy
to Application Server and click Next. Select
the target application server (the localhost
server, if you are using the preconfigured
