BEA WebLogic Integration: A Platform for Application Integration


BEA WebLogic Integration (WLI) is a J2EE technology standards-based solution that facilitates integration with diverse proprietary, legacy, and standards-based applications. WLI is part of the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform, an application infrastructure that is unified, simplified, and extensible. This framework uses standards-based technologies such as J2EE Connector Architecture (J2CA), Java Messaging Service (JMS), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Web Services technologies including Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Service Description Language (WSDL), and Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration (UDDI).

BEA WebLogic Integration provides a complete "build to integrate" approach, making Application Integration less challenging. Based on the widely respected application server, BEA WebLogic Integration provides scalability, stability, and standards-based solutions.

As depicted in Figure 33.2, WLI constitutes Business Process Management functionality, an Application Integration framework based on J2EE Connector Architecture, business-to-business integration (B2Bi) for enabling applications from one company to directly work with applications of business partner(s), and data transformation between any data formats such as binary, ASCII, XML, and so on.

Figure 33.2. BEA WebLogic Integration functional areas.

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Similar to WLI, the BEA WebLogic Portal (WLP) product is built on the BEA WebLogic Server. Hence, a typical integration solution may use a portal built using WLP as a front end integrated with back-end enterprise systems, complex business processes, and business partners utilizing WLI. The out-of-the-box sample shipped with BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0 illustrates two use cases, one of a business-to-consumer (B2C) portal and the other of a business-to-business (B2B) portal. This sample highlights various integration points of WLP, WLI, and Web services.

The B2C portal is designed for a consumer to buy digital imaging products and accessories. The portal is built using WebLogic Portal's Webflow/pipeline technology. The consumer can browse the catalog, select items to buy by placing them in a shopping cart, check out, and submit an order to buy. When the consumer places an item in the shopping cart, an inventory check is done to make sure that the order can be fulfilled. This synchronous call is made using WLI AI's framework (refer to A and B in Figure 33.3). The sample DBMS adapter provided by WLI is used. After the shopping cart is ready, the consumer can submit the order, which causes an XML representation of the order to be pushed to a JMS queue. A BPM workflow is triggered, as shown in C in Figure 33.3. This workflow then uses AI to persist this order to back-end tables, (refer to D and E in Figure 33.3). Besides these integration points, there are two Web services ”one for credit card authorization and the other for product evaluation ”that use WebLogic's Java Web Service (JWS) standard.

Figure 33.3. Use of various functional areas of WLI in B2C Portal of end-to-end sample.

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This example will be discussed in detail in "Business and Workflow Process Management Using WLI," p. 1251 .


The business-to-business portal describes a fictitious company's intranet site that enables the company's purchase agent to get quotes from suppliers, send purchase orders, and receive acknowledgments. The purchase agent is presented with inventory information for the products and their respective parts , based on the results retrieved from an inventory back-end system using AI (refer to A and B in Figure 33.4). After reviewing the inventory details, the purchase agent can submit a Query for Price and Availability (QPA). When the purchasing agent submits a QPA through the portlet containing the QPA form, an XML request is generated and placed on a predetermined JMS queue. This action triggers buyers ' workflows, which in turn trigger two supplier workflows (refer to S1 and S2 in Figure 33.4). The response from the supplier's workflow comes back in the form of aggregated quotes. The purchase agent can now select a quote and send a purchase order request, which again consists of building an XML request and posting it to a predefined JMS queue. A BPM workflow is again triggered, which in turn interacts with the supplier's workflow (refer to E and F in Figure 33.4).

Figure 33.4. Use of various functional areas of WLI in B2B Portal of end-to-end sample.

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This example will be discussed in detail in "Business and Workflow Process Management Using WLI," p. 1251 .


WLI is often used to integrate proprietary systems and technologies such as applications running on IBM mainframes and applications using IBM's MQSeries. BPM workflows can be triggered by XML messages on JMS destinations. They can also be triggered by messages placed on MQSeries by binding MQSeries into the WebLogic JNDI tree using JMS libraries for MQSeries. WLI's Adapter for MQSeries optimizes the integration with MQSeries with business processes.

Figure 33.5 shows a use case in which a BPM workflow can be triggered by a legacy application placing a message on MQSeries. Technologies from Microsoft also integrate with WLI. WebLogic supports jCOM to interoperate with COM/DCOM applications. It allows the dynamic mapping between the most appropriate Java objects and COM components . It supports both late and early binding of object types and makes the Java events accessible from client tools built on Visual Basic using the standard COM event mechanism.

Figure 33.5. WLI interoperating with MQSeries and .NET.

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Services like WLI's application views can be exposed as Web services to interoperate with applications built on the .NET Framework. In the example shown in Figure 33.5, a custom application places a message on MQSeries. In turn, this message invokes a BPM workflow. This is done using the adapter or by creating and binding the MQSeries connection factory and queue into the JNDI tree and then generating a BPM message-driven bean (MDB). This workflow can then send an acknowledgment by placing an XML message on the same MQSeries (refer to C in Figure 33.5).

Applications built on other platforms like .NET can also interoperate with WLI. An AI service that pulls data from a CRM back end using a J2EE Connector Architecture adapter can be wrapped as a Web service and made to interact with a .NET application, as shown in Figure 33.5.

WLI functional entities like BPM workflows can also be accessed via Web services and call external Web services for integration purposes.

BEA's Liquid Data Integration (LDI) technology allows users to query disparate data sources using an X-Query standard. As SQL is used to query a relational database, Liquid Data's X-Query can be used to query data from multiple heterogeneous data sources. Liquid data may be used in conjunction with WLI for integration purposes. In case of BPM, a business operation can be set to execute a Liquid Data Query and return results after querying different data sources. These data sources can be configured via WLI's application view using J2EE Connector Architecture.

This part of Application Integration functionality is covered in "Understanding J2CA Through the WLI Application," p. 1277 .




BEA WebLogic Platform 7
BEA WebLogic Platform 7
ISBN: 0789727129
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 360

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