Promoted and dynamic properties

Introduction

Certain properties lend themselves to being administratively configured. Other properties are not suitable for administrative configuration, typically because modifying them affects the mediation flow in such a way that you need to redeploy the module or mediation module. IBM Integration Designer lists the properties you can choose to promote under the promoted properties of a mediation primitive. You can also promote properties of the callout node.

For mediation primitives contained in a subflow, promoting a property results in the creation of a corresponding property on each Subflow mediation primitive that refers to that subflow. The property can then be promoted again until eventually it reaches the top level request, response, or fault flow.

Any property that you promote from a primitive in the top level request, response, or fault flow is also a dynamic property. A dynamic property can be overridden, at run time, using a mediation policy. Although you can override promoted properties dynamically, you must always specify a valid default value.

Alias names

Promoted properties have an alias name which, for a mediation primitive in the top level request, response, or fault flow, is the name displayed on the runtime administrative console. For a mediation primitive in a subflow, the alias name is the name by which the property is known in the parent flow. You can set the alias name and the alias value from IBM Integration Designer. Multiple promoted properties can be given the same alias name if they are of the same type. In one module or mediation module, promoted properties that have the same alias name and group use the same value.

Generally, you should choose a suitable alias name for your promoted properties rather than accept the default name: choosing a suitable name helps you identify properties at run time. For example, suppose that you have a single mediation flow component containing one Service Invoke mediation primitive in the request flow, and one Service Invoke mediation primitive in the response flow. If you accept the default alias names, you cannot distinguish between the promoted properties of the two Service Invoke primitives in the administrative console.

If you use a mediation policy, with your mediation flow, the mediation policy must refer to a property using its alias name.

Property groups

Promoted properties belong to a group, and are displayed in their group on the runtime administrative console.

By default, the group name is the mediation flow component name, but you can override the default group name.

At integration time, you can use property groups to create collections of properties. For example, suppose you have two mediation flow components in one mediation module. If each component has a Message Logger primitive, you could promote both of the Enabled properties to the same group. If the two promoted properties have the same alias name then, at run time, you could administer the Enabled properties together.

Alternatively, two promoted properties can have the same alias name but be in different groups. At run time, you could then set the property values separately.