Starting a Local Router (for development)

A Process router is a Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) communication bridge. You need not start a local router if a Process Router is running on either the Application Engine server (if using FileNet Workplace) or the web server (if using FileNet Web Services or FileNet Open Client) or the Primary Process Engine. In those cases, you can pass the host name, port number, and router name as part of the VWSession.logon() router_URL parameter. However, starting a local router allows you to observe the RMI communication between a development system and a workflow server more closely.

This procedure assumes you have already installed and configured the Java SDK to use the Process APIs. This procedure also assumes you are using the appropriate JDK — in the example shown, the Sun Microsystems JDK 1.3.1 on a Windows platform; for details on which JDK version to use and how to configure it for Process development, see Configuring the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).

The following procedure uses the Task Manager to start a local router (treat all entries as case-sensitive; for information on using the Task Manager, see Help for Task Manager):

  1. Open a command prompt and enter the following command (modify for the appropriate JDK):

    C:\jdk1.3.1\bin\javaw.exe -classpath filenet.vw.router.VWRouterAdminApp

    Note For FileNet Workplace — if you have not set the eProcess.jar and wcm.jar file locations (in your IDE by adding it to your global or project setting, or if you are not using an IDE, by adding it to the CLASSPATH in a batch file), enter a command similar to the following (modify according to the location of the eProcess.jar and wcm.jar files):

C:\jdk1.3.1\bin\javaw.exe -classpath C:\jdk1.3.1\pe\wcm.jar C:\jdk1.3.1\pe\eProcess.jar filenet.vw.router.VWRouterAdminApp

  1. Once the Router Administration window displays, click Start.
  2. In the router dialog box, enter a name for the local instance of the router; for example, myrouter.
  3. Enter the name of the workflow server running the Process Engine; for example, if the name of the Process Engine server is "myserver", enter myserver.
  4. Enter a valid administrative user name. (When running the samples, for example, you should be a Process Services administrative user.)
  5. Enter the password for the specified user.
  6. Enter an isolated region number. This number can be from 1 to 999 and should correspond to the initialized isolated region you are using for development. While it is possible to do so, you should not run the samples (or other Process applications in development) in an isolated region used for either production or other development work.
  7. Click OK.

    Once the message appears stating that the local router has started, you can use it to communicate with a Process Engine server.

Tip On Windows 2000 systems, you may want to create a short-cut to launch the Process Router. In the short-cut properties dialog box, enter the command shown in the first step in the target field. Specify the directory containing the Process API samples as the start directory. (Specifying the directory containing the API samples creates and updates the router trace files in that directory, which can be useful for debugging when you start modifying the sample code.)

The first time you attempt to connect to a session, a vwapi.txt file is created in the root directory of the disk on which the application is being run. The file contains a complete list of all session transactions handled by the router. Be aware that if you don't start the Process router, the vwapi.txt file will grow rapidly (as duplicate error messages are appended to it) until you terminate the sample application.