Adapterflow Wizard

An Adapterflow lets you to define your entry and exit from iCore Process Server in a pre-packaged way. Adapterflows are built with ready-made elements, which can then be configured to fit your needs. An Adapterflow always starts with an entry point, but may then contain a number of additional activities. You can execute several Event-based Adapterflow definitions simultaneously: If two Events occur at the same time, the instances of the Adapterflow will be processed simultaneously.

Adapterflows are created in the Adapterflow Wizard through a number of simple steps.

Entrypoint – Readers and Listeners

An Entry Point is the activity that starts the Adapterflow. There are two types of Entry points:

• Readers which are polling with a specified interval to find data, for example new files in a directory.
• Listeners which are constantly waiting for a specific Event/incident to occur, for example the renaming of a file in a directory.

Activities

When the Entry point is set, you start adding the processing steps (activities) to your Adapterflow. You can add as many activities as you need. For each activity, you configure the relevant parameters. The configuration lets you select the output parameters of a previous activity to become the input parameters of the current activity – this is called activity binding.

Complex values

You can provide a parameter with a simple value or a complex value. When you use a simple value, you type the value explicitly in the parameter field, or select it via a drop-down list or a browser button. Complex values may contain different types of data. For example, you can build a value consisting of “directory path + counter + string value”, which could result in the parameter value “C:\IncomingFiles\FileNoX.txt”, where ”C:\ IncomingFiles” is the directory path, “FileNoX” is a counter value and “.txt” is a constant string that is added.

Stream

Data is sent between activities without any specific configuration. The contents of a file, for example, are sent automatically as a stream to the next activity.

Logs

All Events, tasks and actions performed in the system, automatic or manual, are recorded in the system log. Each log entry is a separate entity, with a unique log ID. The records are created automatically and display date, time, log level and ID.

The iCore system creates two types of log entries:

• Log entries that do not refer to any particular Event, but only describe what has happened at a certain time. Example: Log entries from system start-up.
• Log entries that contain a reference to a certain Event.

The log entries can have any of five different levels (for example ), depending on their content. To control the level of detail, you can set the log level for each individual Adapterflow.

Two sides of the Adapterflow – "Application friendly" and "ESB friendly"

The Adapterflow has an application-friendly side (towards an ERP system or other application) and an ESB-friendly side (towards any ESB, for example IBM, BizTalk, Tibco, iCore Process Server, etc.). We recommend using a generic XML format as an intermediary. Doing so makes the flow "loosely coupled" and easy to change. The two sides also allow you to expose composite services to the ESB, which will result in less complexity and traffic.