This topic applies only to the IBM Business Process Manager Advanced configuration.

Working with process application servers

In IBM® Integration Designer, you can work with process application servers. For example, you can create a new process application server and then deploy your process applications or toolkits to the server. This enables you to test the process application modules or toolkit modules in the context of the process application or toolkit that contains them, and to also see the status of the process application or toolkit in the Servers view. However, before a Process Center server can be automatically or manually created, you will need to obtain the relevant administrative connection information from your system administrator, including the administrative user name and password.

About this task

By default, a process application server is installed, configured, and run in a Network Deployment (ND) environment. (You can also run a process application server in a non-ND environment as described in the article Creating a standalone Process Center profile in IBM Business Process Manager, but it is not formally supported.)

There are two types of process application servers that you can create in Integration Designer to work with process applications and toolkits:

Process Center server (also known as a playback server)
IBM Process Server on Process Center (also known as an online server)

If you have a process application or toolkit that contains modules and it resides on Process Center, you would typically create a Process Center server to test the modules. Although you can choose to manually create a Process Center server, a server is automatically created whenever you import a process application or toolkit into your Integration Designer workspace. If you can obtain the administrative user ID and password that are required to connect to a process application server, it is generally recommended that you allow Process Center servers to be automatically created.

Note: When a server is automatically created, the server version is included in the server name. If the server is later upgraded to a newer version, the server name will still include the old server version (unless the server name has been edited and updated).

When you have finished developing and testing a process application or toolkit on Process Center, you need to install a snapshot of the process application on an external process server that resides outside the authoring environment of the Process Center. This external process server is called a Process Server on Process Center, which is required for the integration test client to be able test the modules in the process application or toolkit. The server can be a development server, test server, staging server, or production server environment.

If you already have a Process Center server in the Servers view of Integration Designer, you can connect to a process server to quickly and easily create an IBM Process Server on Process Center in the Servers view.

Information about creating or connecting to process application servers is found in the following topics: