BEA WebLogic Integration Functional Areas

The BEA WebLogic Integration product provides an integration solution that includes Business Process Management (BPM), Application Integration (AI), business-to-business integration (B2Bi), and data integration. Each area addresses a different integration need and can be used in and deployed independently of or in conjunction with one another. The following sections provide brief previews of each functional area. Each one of these areas will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters.

Business Process Management

BPM is a Business Process Management solution. It helps in consolidating and managing various business process entities such as tasks , actions, decisions, and events. It provides comprehensive functionality that helps enable collaboration between business processes of trading partners spanning the enterprise boundaries. BPM functionality empowers business analysts and IT staff to design, execute, and optimize business processes.

BPM functionality has the following major components :

• A runtime engine to run business processes

• WebLogic Integration Studio for developing and monitoring business processes

• Worklist client application to allow end users to interact with running business processes

• APIs for BPM client application development, which can be used to develop runtime management clients, design clients, monitoring clients , and so on

• Plug-in framework that enables integration of other areas of functionality in WebLogic Integration

Application Integration

WLI's Application Integration (AI) functionality enables the interaction with Enterprise Information Systems (EISs) such as CRM, mainframe transaction processing systems, database systems, and legacy systems based on the J2EE Connector Architecture (J2CA). The AI functionality can be used to interact with an EIS from within custom code or in a process flow defined with WebLogic Integration Studio.

AI functionality has the following major components:

• Integration framework

• Adapter Development Kit (ADK)

• EIS resource adapters

• Plug-in for WebLogic Integration Studio

Application Integration can be used to define interfaces using resource adapters. A Web-based console called wlai console is provided for facilitating the administration of these resource adapters.

The Adapter Development Kit allows the development of resource adapters. This kit can also be used to test and deploy these adapters.

The BEA WebLogic Integration includes sample adapters for out-of-the-box use. These implementations can be used as a reference while developing new adapters.

The Application Integration functionality can also be used in conjunction with BPM. Interfaces defined using resource adapters can be made available to BPM using the plug-in provided. This way, the business process designer can incorporate AI functionality, such as accessing an EIS system from within a business process.

B2B and Data Integration

The B2B Integration component of WLI provides business partner connectivity and integration using its BPM and AI framework.

The B2Bi framework provides the following features:

• Support for various business protocols such as RosettaNet and ebXML for enterprises to share information with their partners

• Connectivity with partners with options such as Browser Client, File Sharing Client, and EDI-based Exchange

• A data repository and design tools for managing and defining metadata used for B2B integration

The data integration functionality provides integration of data across enterprise applications by providing translations between data from legacy systems and XML. Once the legacy data is converted to XML, it can be consumed by XML applications, transformed into a specific XML grammar, or used to initiate business processes in the WebLogic Integration process engine.