Application Connectors

This topic describes the functions, features and limitations, if any, of application connectors used in Process Platform.

The application connectors enable integration of various applications and technologies with Process Platform through a set a open standards. These connectors act as a means to establish technical interoperability between the components of Process Platform and other components such as Java, C++, Visual Basic, .Net and so on.
The application connectors of Process Platform support reuse of the program logic and provide transparency of location in a distributed environment.
The detailed information related to the application connectors of Process Platform is given below.

Auditing

Auditing assists you to record the audit information such as when the Artifact is configured in SOAP Mode. Also, it helps you to retrieve the audit information whenever you wish to view.

Binary Transformation Channel

Business Transformation Channel Connector supports converting Binary data to XML format and vice versa.

BAM Connector

The BAM Connector filters business data, monitors the critical events of business and non-process data for further analysis. Also, it performs the administrative tasks (publish, unpublish, execution) of Process Platform BAM artifacts like Process Monitoring Object, Business Measure, KPI and Business Event Response.

Business Process Management

The Business Process Management connector provides runtime environment for deployment, execution, debugging, administration, monitoring of business processes and archival of historical process data.

CoBOC Service

CoBOC Service Connector provides a robust mechanism for object state management, configurable business rules and real-time state monitoring.

OpenText Process Suite Platform (<instance name>) Service

OpenText Process Suite Platform (<instance name>) Service may be a service running on a Windows machine, or a daemon running on a Linux machine. It is a program responsible for the life-cycle (start, stop, reset and re-start) of the Service Containers that are configured on the machine.

Other - Custom Application Connector

Process Platform enables building custom application connectors to connect to any specific back-end that is not supported by the default connectors.

Collaborative Workspace Connector

Collaborative Workspace (CWS) connector handles all the development activity in a workspace, including creation of solutions, projects, and documents. It acts as a bridge between the CWS repository and the file system and keeps them in sync. It is also responsible for generating run-time application content by building, publishing, and packaging the application.

Data Transformation Service

Data Transformation Service Connector provides a translation service to other components and applications and is responsible for implementing the XML transformation.

Document Store

Process Platform can be configured to work with any content repository. After the configuration is done, Process Platform behaves as the client for the content repository for storing documents. For more information on Document Store, refer Document Store. Data Transformation Service Connector provides a translation service to other components and applications and is responsible for implementing the XML transformation.

E-mail Connector

E-mail connector enables sending and receiving mails through the SMTP or POP3 or IMAP protocol. You can receive a single mail or multiple mails. You can also send and delete mails. For information on E-mail connector APIs, refer to E-mail Connector APIs.

Event Service

Event Service enables the subscription of events and the subscribed events are then published to the subscriber. For more information on Event Service, refer to Event Service.

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Connector

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) connector is used to upload and download files from an FTP server to a system on which the FTP Service Container is running.
The FTP connector APIs handle several types of FTP commands. For information on this, refer to FTP Connector APIs.

LDAP Connector

LDAP connector reads and writes the User details, Roles, ACLs, Web service Interfaces, Service Groups, and Service Containers into OpenText CARS. This connector must not be deleted, as all Process Platform components use it to connect to OpenText CARS.

MDM Publisher

While installing Process Platform, you must provide database details for placing MDM content. If this step is skipped, the MDM service containers are not created. Later when you want to work with MDM, you must create MDM publisher and MDM service. MDM model contains hub and spokes for managing data. MDM Publisher propagates (publishes) the changes at Hub to all the subscribing spoke systems. It also handles the Publish To Run-time process (PTR) of MDM Models.

MDM Service

If MDM is not configured during the installation of Process Platform then MDM Service must be created later to work with MDM. The MDM Service receives the changes from all the spoke systems and updates the Hub data store. It also performs bulk uploads of data. It handles the requests for log viewer, to view the upload and the synchronization logs.

Notification Service

The Notification service of Process Platform deals with notifying users about business events that occur. A notification can be delivered either to the Process Platform Inbox of a user, to an external email address, or to an application that uses the Inbox. It facilitates the deployment of various Delivery Models, Worklists, and Dispatch Algorithms.

Rule Repository Service Connector

Rule Repository connector is used to define and evaluate Rules and Decision Cases in Process Platform. The Rule Repository connector facilitates modeling of complex Rules and Decision Cases and also enables you to invoke Java program constructs from rule expressions.

Scheduler Service Connector

Scheduler Service Connector enables you to deploy and execute various schedules that are used for managing time-driven applications.

Security Administration

The functions of security administration such as creating trust stores and so on are available in the 'System' organization. The security administration connector is created when you want to implement the functionality of security administration in other organizations within Process Platform. You can also create it for load balancing.

Single Sign-On

Single Sign-On (SSO) is a mechanism for managing authentication. The SSO connector is used for enabling auditing for authentication. You may create multiple SSO connectors for configuring fail over. For information on configuring SSO for failover, refer to Configuring SSO for Fail Over.

Translation Connector

The Translation connector handles translation-related activities such as retrieving translated label and text and translation of documents. Ensure that the Translation connector is of type OLE DB.

Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) Connector

UDDI connector enables:

• Locating and consuming external Web services in a UDDI registry.
• Viewing WSDL for a selected Web service.
• Publishing Process Platform Web service operations to a UDDI Registry.
• Setting specific entities and services as preferences so that Process Platform Web service operations can be published to them.
• Creating new entities and services and publish Process Platform Web service operations into them.
• Modifying business entity and service names, description. Add and delete category and identifier bags. Update, add and delete contact information.

User Management

The User Management Connector facilitates the centralized management of users and roles. It provides an easy way of populating user information as batch operations into Process Platform.

WS-AppServer Connector

The WS-AppServer connector provides connectivity and data management capabilities while working with relational databases and Java classes. It performs the following functions:

• Establishes a bi-directional link with data in a relational database and objects in code
• Supports all leading DB Vendors
• Supports creation of Custom objects representing data from multiple relational tables
• Supports executing SQL queries on the database
• Handles all types of relations among data objects (1-1, 1-n, n-n)
• Manages data persistence in statefull and stateless conditions
• Supports generation of Java code for both standard and custom data models
• Facilitates adding custom logic to the generated Java code
• Supports adding event listeners to the application logic that react and log information on events before, during, and after a transaction takes place
• Supports generation of Web service operations for both standard and custom data models

XForms Connector

The XForms connector handles all requests and responses related to content in an XForm. During design time, this connector is used to retrieve property sheets, and to preview and publish XForms. At runtime, this connector is used to retrieve content for an XForm, and configure the compression and content-expiry settings.

HTTP Connector

The OpenText HTTP connector provides connectivity to web servers and services exposed through HTTP.

HTTP connector accesses the following services:

• Web services with XML payload as request and response
• REST services with XML and JSON

HTTP connector supports the following HTTP operations:

• GET
• POST
• PUT
• DELETE

Any service that has to be accessed through HTTP connector must be available as a SOAP web service in the platform since Process Platform interprets only SOAP services. The HTTP connector, with pluggable request and response handlers, maps the SOAP request from Process Platform to the corresponding request expected by a service. For more information on the features of HTTP connector, see Features of HTTP connector.

JMS Connector

The Opentext JMS connector provides reliable connectivity between service containers or applications through JMS. The JMS connector connects to JMS middleware such as ActiveMQ, Websphere MQ, Sun J2EE, and others with the Process Platform service container.

The JMS connector supports:

• JMS Specification Version 1.1
• Messaging using Queues and Topics
• Distributed transactions
• Different message formats, such as clear text, XML, base64, and Binary Transformation Channel (BTC)
• Request/Reply and a provision to generate a correlation ID
• Different types of message pollers, such as Interval Poller, Compatibility Poller, Request-Reply Poller, and Custom Poller
• Works as a transporter of messages between Process Platform and Queues or Topics
• Exposes Web services to consumers to work with the JMS connector

Repository

Repository Service acts as a repository for Process Platform objects. This service container contains the following:

• Tag Service - This service manages tags
• Task Service - This service retrieves and stores tasks to the XDS
• XML Store - This service reads and write XML objects to a persistent storage