getActivityInstanceAttribute XPath BPM Extension Functions

23-2 Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management If the SOA Composite contains components or external references that expose services, then these appear in the business catalog. See Chapter 12, Using the Business Catalog , for more information about the business catalog. When you add a component to the SOA Composite, it automatically appears in the business catalog so that you can use it in your BPM project. The SOA Composite is the unit that you use to deploy your BPM project. The components and dependencies that appear in the SOA Composite specify how to deploy a project. If you remove a process or a wire from the SOA Composite, then even if they still appear in the BPM Project they are ignored when you deploy the project.

23.1.1 Understanding the Relationship Between SOA Composites and SOA Components

When you run a BPM project the SOA engine creates a SOA composite instance. The SOA composite instance contains an instance of each of the components defined in the SOA composite. For example, if your SOA composite defines a BPMN process and a human Task, then the SOA composite instance contains a BPMN process instance and a human task instance. The components in a SOA composite instance are independent from each other. When you terminate one of them, this does not affect the other components in the SOA composite instance. In a SOA composite instance that contains an instance of a BPMN process and an instance of a Human Task, terminating the BPMN process instance does not terminate the Human Task. After terminating the BPMN process, the Human Task instance is still available and you can access it using Oracle Worklist application. But completing that Human Task does not have any effect on the terminated process. In a similar way, when an interrupting timer or message boundary event arrives to a user task, the BPMN process instance leaves the user task but the associated Human Task remains available. Because the interrupting timer or message boundary event arrived before the user completes the user task, the human task remains unfinished, and you can still access it thought the Worklist application. However running that human task does not have any effect on the BPMN process.

23.1.2 Working with SOA Components

All the SOA components and external references that are exposed as services in the SOA Composite appear in the business catalog in your Business Project. If you created your BPM project based on an existing SOA project, then all the components and external references exposed as services in your SOA project automatically appear in the business catalog. If there are activities in your BPMN process that use a component in their implementation, then the SOA Composite shows a wire between the BPMN process and the component. Wires represent a relationship between a service and a reference. When you save a BPMN process Oracle BPM Studio automatically updates the wires between the BPMN process and the components it uses. Services represent the interface a component exposes. References represent the service interfaces a component requires. For more information about services and references, see Oracle Fusion Middleware Developers Guide for Oracle SOA Suite. To implement the activities in your BPMN process you must assign them an SOA component. To add these components to your BPM Project you must use the SOA Using SOA Composites with BPM Projects 23-3 Composite editor. From the SOA Composite editor you can add the following SOA components to your BPM Project: ■ Service Adapters ■ Human Tasks ■ Business Rules ■ Mediators ■ BPEL Processes If the SOA component that you added to the SOA Composite exposes itself as a service, then the Component appears in the business catalog. You can use any of the components in the business catalog to implement the activities in your BPMN Process. For more information about how to implement BPMN activities, see the chapters in the following parts: ■ Part V, Working with Business Components ■ Part VI, Controlling the Process Flow Figure 23–1 BPMN process in an SOA Composite This SOA Composite diagram show a BPMN process that uses Human Tasks, Business Rules and Service Adapters to implement its activities. Note that the BPMN process has a link to each of these SOA components.

23.1.3 BPMN Process in SOA Composites

When you add a BPMN process it is automatically added to the SOA Composite. The BPM process appears as a component in the SOA Composite. If the BPMN process contains a start event of type message, then the interface of the process appears as an exposed service. The SOA Composite shows how your process depends on the different components your BPM Project uses. If an activity in your project uses a service exposed by an SOA component for its implementation, then the SOA component shows a line between the