Hello from Austria.

I am very new to all of this webMethods stuff and need some help.
Currently I am looking for a replacement of an workflow engine. But this workflow has only a very small number of User interaktions. Most of the time the Prozesse works without interactions like a batch prozess.

But: For examle if a value of a Funktion was to high the User has to decide, how to go on.

The new solution hast to run on unix, start unix apps and plsql scripts, notify user by mail and let the user decide what to do.

Maybe detailed description of my problem can help:

1. files get in by a service.
2. A Programm detects this and starts job
3. Programm is running

if output is ok → next program starts

if not → mail is send to admin → the admin decides: go on - or stop

Florian

Hi Florian,

Hopefully you’ve already started making progress but here are some general pointers. Other than this, the Getting Started docs on Advantage, plus the Designer User’s Guide would be good early reading. However, you are looking to work through integration, file handling, data manipulation, process modelling, messaging, human tasks and UI creation, so I hope you have access to more help than the forums and the documentation! Good luck.

• Have a look at the file polling option for Integration Server to collect your files - these would be mapped to notification documents on the Broker which would trigger the start of a process model

• Invoking PL/SQL would normally best be done using the JDBC adapter exposed as a service within the Integration Server and then referenced as a step in your process model

• In the process model, use transition conditions to branch to tasks in the process model; behind the tasks create the user interfaces to support the user interaction.

• Launching command line programs is not usually a good way to integrate, so look for better options; if this is your only one, there are example services for doing this in the PSUtilities package in the Samples section of Advantage - see http://advantage.webmethods.com.

• You can do notifications as a service from Integration Server if you wish, but there are other options as well including the more sophisticated notification framework in the Task Engine which handles the human tasks.

What you have looks like a good first project, but you will need to make sure you have covered all the areas for learning as well.

Regards,
Rob D.