Services

Events in relation to a BPD characterize the general process flow and can be visualized from the diagram for a clean and readable perspective. Conversely, a BPD indicates huge amounts of information but does not provide the functionalities concerning the actual implementation of the process. Consider a very simple process of how you prepare your cup of tea in the morning.

Each step is executed using the idea of a service in IBM BPM. A service can be thought of as a reusable implementation of some specific function of which the caller is ignorant of its completion. Within BPDs, every activity in a diagram is mapped to a service and, at runtime, the corresponding service is triggered as soon as that step in the process is reached.

Services are typically invoked from the activity step of a BPD, with the service to be invoked within the confines of a given activity defined in the Implementation tab.

Events in relation to a BPD characterize the general process flow and can be visualized from the diagram for a clean and readable perspective. Conversely, a BPD indicates huge amounts of information but does not provide the functionalities concerning the actual implementation of the process. Consider a very simple process of how you prepare your cup of tea in the morning.

Each step is executed using the idea of a service in IBM BPM. A service can be thought of as a reusable implementation of some specific function of which the caller is ignorant of its completion. Within BPDs, every activity in a diagram is mapped to a service and, at runtime, the corresponding service is triggered as soon as that step in the process is reached.

Services are typically invoked from the activity step of a BPD, with the service to be invoked within the confines of a given activity defined in the Implementation tab.

Result caching in a service

A service executed with a set of parameters returns a result set. If the same service with the same input parameters is run several times, chances are it is going to return the same output, but behind the scenes, the logic of the service will be processed every time. We can turn on a feature that will let the service cache its results for better performance. It means that once a service has been executed with some given input, the results are cached. If the same service is requested again and the same inputs are given exactly, the previously stored results are returned and the logic of the service does not have to be executed again.