Can external ADF application write to BPM Payload structures?

Question

Hi all
New to BPM and trying to understand the best practices here.
We have Oracle BPM 11.1.1.6.0.
We have an external ADF application that will be used for online data entry, that comes in via public user. This data then needs to be reviewed and approved/rejected by the internal users and for this we are using BPM interface.
I have many concerns implementing above scenario in BPM
a) Can we login to BPM workspace via ADF application? If so, can you experts share with us some examples to look at?
b) We dont want to use temp tables in the database, when user is doing online entry. We need to push this into BPM payload structures, when a user saves the data partially. When he does submit for approval, we need to initiate a task on the BPM side(for the reviewer). Is this possible? , especially saving the data into BPM payload structures from ADF application? Is this recommended or a good practice? Is there an example or how this can be achieved?
I know this is a long list of questions, but going thru the web, really did not help us much. So checking with the community for the best way to get good reliable answers.
Thanks
SR
Edited by: libran on Feb 28, 2013 1:29 PM

Answer 1

Hi SR
a) Can we login to BPM workspace via ADF application? If so, can you experts share with us some examples to look at?
Not directly. BPM Application itself is a WebApplication. In high level it has 2 main things. List of Tasks with different status like Assigned, completed, active etc et.c And for each Task, click on that opens the task details page. This task details page is the ONE that can contain ACTUAL Data. Now this actual Data can be part of the process itself we call as Payload. Or this entire data can be in any other existing application or database. But the payload will just have like main PKs (Primiary keys) like order id, salesid, customer id, projectid etc etc. Using these IDs and some APIs you can use your existing application data. Coming to screen, you cannot use the existing screens as it is.
b) We dont want to use temp tables in the database, when user is doing online entry. We need to push this into BPM payload structures, when a user saves the data partially. When he does submit for approval, we need to initiate a task on the BPM side(for the reviewer). Is this possible? , especially saving the data into BPM payload structures from ADF application? Is this recommended or a good practice? Is there an example or how this can be achieved?
1) NO. I would NOT recommend to put your existing data filled out from online form into Payload. There is NO need for this. From online when user clicks on Submit for Approval, just pass the key information like IDs, some names, status etc. Just the core and it should like 2 or 3 at the most. Any complex data will have only couple of main primary master keys and rest are all the internal relations. Once these IDs are in paylosd, you can use ADF components to pull the full entire data set for display in the TaskForms (mostly display only). Use ManagedBeans or DataControls/EJBs that takes these IDs.
2) From online web on Submit, YES, you can invoke automatically a BPM Process. BPM Process can be initiate in many ways: Using Workspace application, Email, scheduler, WebServices, Java based APIs etc. The ideal way is WebServices. I guess you want to do first some validation and then only create an approval instance.
Giving a ready made example is tough. I do not have any old links on top of my head for reference. I will see if I can find them.
My suggestion, leave the Payload as light as possible unless and untill if there is no other go.
Thanks
Ravi Jegga