WebSphere Partner Gateway processes business documents so that it can route them to the business partners in the business protocol that the business partners are expecting. As described earlier, the Business Processing Engine (BPE), the core component of the Document Manager component, is responsible for running the flow as the business document flows through Document Manager. The entire business document flow in BPE is divided into three units, also referred to as workflows: fixed inbound workflow, variable workflow, and fixed outbound workflow. Each workflow consists of series of steps, which BPE runs in sequence.
Fixed inbound and fixed outbound workflow refer to the standard processing that all documents undergo as they flow into and out of the main processing stage. They are called fixed because the number and type of processing steps are always the same. See Figure 1.
In variable workflow, the number and type of processing steps depend completely on the requirements of the business protocol. You can customize the business document processing in two ways:
This chapter covers both ways of customizing workflow:
An additional section covers development and deployment issues.
An API listing and example code follows in the next chapter. Also included in this listing is information on a number of utility, security, and classes common to all WebSphere Partner Gateway components.