Working with basic activities

Invoke activity

Use this activity to call an operation on a specific partner. Operations can be either one-way (asynchronous) or request/response (synchronous).

Assign activity

Use this activity for basic data manipulation through the use of expressions, to map service endpoint references to or from partner links, or to copy some form of information from one part of your process to another. For example, it could be used to update the values of your variables or partner links.

Receive activity

The receive activity provides web services to the process partners by waiting for external input from the partners, and channeling it into the process. It can have one or more associated reply activities if it is used in request-response operations.

Receive activities can either start a process, or receive a message in an already running process. Configure the receive activity to be one of these types using the Create a new process instance if one does not already exist setting on the Details tab of the Properties view. When selected the receive activity starts a new process.

You can configure authorization duties for a receive activity, and in so doing, identify the staff members that are allowed to send a message to the process. See Authorization tab: BPEL process editor.

Receive choice activity

This activity halts the process in order to wait for an operation to be called on it, or for a timeout alarm to go off. It will follow the control path that is appropriate to the first message it receives. The first activity in that path can be either a receive case element or a timeout element.

Like the receive activity, the receive choice activity can either start a process, or receive a message in an already running process. Configure the receive choice activity to be one of these types using the Create a new process instance if one does not already exist setting on the Details tab of the Properties view. When selected the receive choice activity starts a new process.

You can configure authorization duties for a receive case element, and in so doing, identify the staff members that are allowed to send a message to the process. See Authorization tab: BPEL process editor.

• Receive case element
• Use this element within a receive choice activity to create a control path and specify the operation that will run it. There is at least one receive case element path nested within a receive choice activity. When run, the process halts at the receive choice activity and listens for a message from its operations. The first message that comes in determines which path is followed.

• Timeout element
• Use this element within either a receive choice activity to create a control path that is followed when a specified time has either been reached or has elapsed. This element is used on a single path, and is configured to specify either a specific date, or period of time. When run, this path is chosen when no input is received within this time period, or by the specified date.

Reply activity

Use this activity in a synchronous (request/response) operation to return the output or fault to the partner that initiated the operation. This activity specifies the same partner implementation as the corresponding receive activity. A reply is always sent to the same partner from which a message was previously received

Wait activity

Use this to stop the process for a specified period of time. You configure this activity either by telling it how long it should hold up the process, or by specifying when it has waited long enough.

Empty action activity

Use this activity as an undefined object to act as a placeholder within your process. You might do this if you were designing a process that you expected somebody else to implement, or if you were trying to synchronize the activities within a parallel activity.

Snippet activity

Use this activity to compose visual expressions and Java™ code and thereby insert custom behavior into your process.

Data Map activity

Use this activity to compose a mapping between process variables. Any variable can be mapped using an XML map, variables that refer to business objects can be transformed using business object maps. XML maps are the recommended choice.

Note: Reuse of XML maps is not supported. Reuse of business object maps is supported only through the visual snippet editor, see the related topics Reusing a business object map for more details.

To work with a basic activity, proceed as follows: