When building integrated business solutions with WebSphere® Integration Developer, you will create modules, mediation modules, and/or libraries to contain the resources and code.
A module is a WebSphere Business Integration project that is used for development, version management, organizing business service resources, and deploying to the WebSphere Process Server. Business services include processes, human tasks, state machines, business rules, and Java™ services. In fact, a module is the basic unit of deployment to this runtime environment. You can add dependent libraries, Java projects, and J2EE projects to a module and choose to deploy them with the module.
The module provides the business services, which are modeled as Service Components Architecture (SCA) components wired together in its module assembly. This module can contain all the resources that are used in the service, but these resources are private and can only be used within the module. To reuse the logic in a module from other modules, you can export the component's interfaces. For details on components, see the related concepts listed at the end of this topic.
Often, interfaces, business objects, business object maps, events, relationships, roles, and Web service ports need to be shared so that resources in several modules can use them. The library is a project that is used to store these resources; contents in this project can be shared.
In order for a module or mediation module to use the resources from a library, it has to be added as a dependent to the module. A library cannot be deployed by itself. However, you can add a library to the module and select to deploy it with the module. Also, you can add library dependencies to a library; for example, if one library uses resources in another library, then you would need to add the library dependency. For details on dependencies, see the related concepts listed at the end of this topic.
To
illustrate the use of modules and libraries for business services, look at
this example of a customer enquiry application. When the customer ID is supplied,
the customer's portfolio information is returned. Processing this enquiry
requires two additional services: one to access the customer's account information
and another to find out the current stock price. The following diagram shows
this application:
Using our Customer enquiry example, three modules and a library are created, as shown in the Business Integration view:
See the related concepts for more information on components and modules.
A mediation module is a WebSphere Business Integration project that is used for development, version management, organizing resources, and deploying to the WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus or the WebSphere Process Server. Mediation services consist of flows that intercept and modify messages between service consumers (exports) and service providers (imports). You can add dependent libraries, Java projects, and J2EE projects to a mediation module and choose to deploy them with the module.
A mediation module provides a mediation service, which is modeled as Service Components Architecture (SCA) components wired together in its module assembly. This module can contain all the resources that are used in the service, but these resources are private and can only be used within the module. To reuse the logic in a module from other modules, you can export the component's interfaces. For details on components, see the related concepts listed at the end of this topic.
To
illustrate the use of mediation modules and libraries, we will use a simple
example of a stock quote service application; when the customer ID and stock
symbol are supplied, the query is processed by the mediation flow. The customer's
subscription level is determined, and depending on the type of subscription,
the query is routed to the appropriate service provider and the stock quote
is returned to the client application. The following picture shows this application:
Using our stock quote example, a mediation module and a library are created, as shown in the Business Integration view:
Related information