Development and production environments

The case management environment consists of a development environment for creating and initially testing solutions, a test environment for fully testing the solutions, and a production environment where users work on active and archived cases. All of the environments include FileNet® P8 object stores and databases for storing solution data. In addition, environments include a file system at the IBM® Case Manager tier for storing pages, views, and resources, and a file system at the FileNet P8 tier for storing rulesets, if applicable.

Development environment

The development environment is typically in a dedicated FileNet P8 domain and includes a design object store where solutions are stored. You use Case Builder to define solutions, which are then saved and versioned in the design object store. After you design a solution, you deploy the solutions into a target environment, and then you can use Case Client to do basic functional testing of your solution and to customize the user interface.

In addition, the development environment uses project areas in the design object store to isolate the effects of resetting the test environment. Each project areas has its own target object store and Content Platform Engine region.

This graphic shows a development environment in an FileNet P8 domain that contains solutions in project areas, target object stores with deployed solutions, and solution applications in IBM Content Navigator.

Test environment

The test environment is for testing the solutions that were created in the development environment. You might have multiple test environments, for example a performance testing environment and a pre-production testing environment.

Your test environment can be in a different FileNet P8 domain or in the same FileNet P8 domain as the development environment, but with a different set of object stores to use for the staging and target object stores. There are no project areas used in the test environment. Solutions built in the development environment are imported into the test environment.

This graphic shows a development environment and a test environment in an FileNet P8 domain.

FileNet Deployment Manager and other tools are used to migrate assets that are not managed by IBM Business Automation Workflow tools. IBM Workflow Center interacts with the solutions in the design object store by using case APIs. The workflow project is exported as a .zip file from Workflow Center and, using either online or offline deployment, you import and deploy to IBM Workflow Server.

Production environment

The production environment is where your solution is deployed into production for case workers to process cases.

Your production environment is in a different FileNet P8 domain. In your production environment, you need a single staging object store where solutions are imported to and deployed from. You also need target environments to deploy your solutions to. You can deploy many solutions into a single target environment. Ensure that you have enough system resources for the number of cases that you anticipate having in each database.

This graphic shows a development environment and a production environment, each in their own FileNet P8 domain.

FileNet Deployment Manager can be used to move any assets that are not created in IBM Business Automation Workflow between the FileNet P8 object stores in the production environment. Workflow Center interacts with the solutions in the design object store by using case APIs. The workflow project is exported as a .zip file from Workflow Center and, using either online or offline deployment, you import and deploy to Workflow Server.

Required databases and object stores

Before you install and configure your case management system, you must plan and prepare the required databases and object stores for your development, test, and production environments.

Remember: If you are using IBM Content Manager as your document repository, you must also prepare the IBM Content Manager environment.

Your case management system requires the following databases and object stores for each environment:

The FileNet P8 Global Configuration Data (GCD) database for each FileNet P8 domain.
The database for the case management design object store.
The databases for the target environments. A target environment consists of one target object store and its associated workflow system. The target object store and its associated workflow system are collocated in the target environment database. You can have multiple target environments in a test and production domain.
A case history store to record extended case history data.
A database for IBM Content Navigator.

You can create new object stores to use with IBM Business Automation Workflow. You can also take advantage of the documents and objects that are already contained in an object store by designating an existing object store as your target object store.