Filenet Process Engine Architecture

Today we will discuss about the FileNet Process Engine architecture. Process Engine is used to manage the workflows among people  and systems for content and  processes. It supports supports process standards, such as Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) for modeling and the XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) for definition and executionProcess Designer tool is used to design and develop the workflow. There are tools available to analyze and simulate the workflow. We can integrate the third party rules engine with the workflow to associate with the steps.

Process Service is core of the business process management system. It provides workflow services on behalf of the Process Engine.
Process Task Manager is an admin tool to configure and manage process-related services on the Process Engine server.
Email Notification Enables automatic transmission of e-mail to users when specified process-related events occur. E-mail notification can also be used to track workflows.

There are three different APIs are available to develop the process engine applications.
1. Java API
2. PEWS (Process Engine Web Services)
3. Process Engine REST Services API

Process Engine Java API: IBM FileNet Business Process Manager contains a full featured Java API set that allows for various interactions with the PE server. This API set may be familiar to a lot of IBM FileNet experienced programmers from the eProcess versions through IBM FileNet P8 4.x. This API set provides access to define, administer, and control runtime workflow processing. It can also be used to build custom Step Processors and Work Performers.The PE Java API uses the CE Java API for authentication. Authentication-related calls can be done with EJB or WSI transports, though the use of the Web services transport is the normal configuration.
Process Engine Web Services: Process Engine Web Services (PEWS) provides a WSDL-based interface to communicate with PE. PEWS is a functional subset of the PE Java API. Because there is no native PE .NET API, PEWS is ideal for development with .NET. Similar to the CEWS, PEWS is also compliant with Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Basic Profile 1.0 and WS-Security.

Process Engine REST services:

A new feature introduced in IBM FileNet P8 4.5 is the PE REST Service. The PE REST Service provides access to the PE by following the Representational State Transfer (REST) architecture style. PE objects are exposed as REST resources which are accessible by standard HTTP methods. This API is ideal for Ajax-based Web applications that need to talk to PE.

FileNet Content Engine Architecture

Hi, Today I am going to explain the architecture of the FileNet Content Engine. Content Engine serves as
1. Main content management
2. Security management
3. Storage management engine for the family of IBM FileNet P8 products.

We can install and implement IBM FileNet Content Manager as a stand-alone product. The Content Engine is written in Java as a J2EE application. Developers can use the Java API , Net API or Web services to develop the applications based on the Content Engine. In the FileNet P8 v3.x we can use the COM API to develop applications using Content Engine. COM API is useful for developers who came from VB background. This COM APIs et is now supported as a compatibility layer in P8 4.x, allowing many COM-based custom applications that are written in P8 3.x to continue functioning in P8 4.x with a few configuration changes.

In the Content Engine, document is a mix of content as well as the metada (you may call it as document properties). You are also classified this as sturctured (metadata) and unstructured (content) data. In the Content Engine all the structered data will be save to the RDBMS and the structured data will be saved to a filestore. A file store can be a shared drive, database or tape drive. The file store can be configured using Filenet Enterprise Manager (FEM).

The content engine uses the directory services to authenticate the users. All the users and roles are defined in the directory services. Based on these roles and users content engine authorize the users to a particular document or object. Security privileges can be defined at a class level or at object level based on the requirement.

Any Web service call first route to the Web services listener and later it will route to the EJB Listener which is stateless, which demarcates the transaction and authentication boundaries into the server.

FileNet P8 Architecture

Hi All,  Today we are going to discuss about the FileNet P8 Architecture. FileNet platform contains 3 servers we can call them as engines.
1. Application Engine
2. Content Engine
3. Process Engine
Apart from that there are different tools available like Capture, Records Manager and workplace to perform different activities.  The FileNet platform can be integrated with different  repositories like Image Services, Content services and other third party repositories using the Content Federation Services.

 

Introduction to FileNet blog....

Hi All, I am Naveen and I am working on FileNet technologies for some time. I have observed that there are very less resources are available on the internet regarding the FileNet product. The main objective of this blog is to close that gap and became a forum to share the knowledge and discuss the issues related to FileNet.