Specifying Applications

Activities performed within the context of a business process may have to execute application logic. This application logic is defined by a concept called application. For more details on applications and their types please refer to the chapter Applications of the Workflow Basics concepts.

This section will explain how to work with applications in the Process Workbench. In the sections System Integration and Data Integration more details on working with concrete applications can be found.

Creating Applications

To create an application you can either:

• In the diagram toolbar palette select Applications or Int. Applications under Items and from the pop-up menu the type you want. The application is created by subsequently clicking on the diagram canvas and appears also in the Outline view.

Figure: Applications

• Or in the Application section of the Outline view area, choose New or New Interactive Application and the wanted application type from the pop-up menu. The created application will appear in the Outline view.

Properties

Open the application properties dialog e.g. by double-clicking on the New Application symbol. Choose an ID and a name for the application. Please note that IDs containing hyphens, blanks or dots and IDs starting with digits are not supported. Using the Visibility Public option, you can also specify whether you want to import applications by reference when referenced in another model. By default, this check box is selected.

Figure: General Properties

For more information, please refer to Multi Package Modeling Preferences section of Setting Process Manager Preferences chapter. Edit the application type specific properties. For a detailed description of the configuration of the Stardust application types, see the sections System Integration and Data Integration.

Figure: Plain Java Application Properties Dialog

Controlling Parameters

An application provides the following controlling properties:

• Cost Center
• Actual Cost Per Second

Figure: Controlling Properties of an Application

Simulation

In this section you can specify simulation configurations, as described detailed in the chapter Simulation Configurations of the Stardust Simulation Guide.)

Effort Planning

In this section you can set the following Process Effort properties:

Figure: Effort Planning Properties of an Application

Please refer to the chapter Project Effort Calculation for detailed information on this functionality.

Browsing to Classes and Methods

To browse for a class or interface in an application properties dialog:

• Click the provided Browse button.
• In the Select entries field enter the first letters of your class.
• Classes matching will be displayed in the Matching items list below.
• Select the class and OK the dialog.

Figure: Browse for an Application Class.

To browse for a method:

• Select the providedBrowse button.
• A list of provided methods is displayed in a dialog.
• Choose the method and OK the dialog.

Figure: Browse for a Method.

Deleting Applications

To delete an application, use the option Delete in the application's pop-up menu in a diagram. In the Outline view, use the corresponding option Delete.

To remove an application symbol from the diagram, choose the option Delete Symbol in the application's pop-up menu. After this operation the application will still be part of the model.

Working with Referenced Applications

Once the file connection is established, you can reference the application in the referencing model.

To reference the application, drag and drop the application from Outline view > External Model Information > File Connection on the diagram canvas.

Figure: Drag and Drop Referred Application

Open the Property page of the application and select Application. The list of available application gets displayed.

Figure: Referred Application - Property Page

If you select the Display Imported Model Elements as Groups check box, the references of the application get displayed.

Figure: Referred Application - Display Imported Model Elements as Groups