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

Calling business services

Call a business service from your BPEL process using an invoke activity.

About this task

The Invoke activity calls an operation from another service. To use an Invoke activity, you must specify a reference partner. The reference partner always points to the Interface of the service that you are calling. Then you associate the Invoke with that reference partner and select one operation that you want to call on that partner. You can have multiple Invoke activities for one partner. When the Invoke activity runs, it will invoke the specified operation. If the operation has inputs or outputs you must specify variables for each of those inputs and outputs. These variables hold the data that is being sent to the service or received from the service.

An outline of how to call a business service from your BPEL process is provided below. See related links for more detailed information.

Procedure

Create a reference partner that points to the interface of the target service.
Create an Invoke activity and associate it with this reference partner.
- Drag the partner onto the canvas, which automatically creates an Invoke activity, or
- Manually create an Invoke activity and associate the reference partner:
  1. Add an Invoke activity to your BPEL process.
  2. In the properties view of the Invoke, set the partner.
In the Details tab of the Properties view of the Invoke, select one operation of the partner.
In the Details tab of the Properties view of the Invoke, set the data for that operation by providing appropriate variables for each input and output of the operation.
Drop both the process and the partner onto the assembly diagram, and create a wire between them. If the partner is not a local component, create an Import and wire the process to the Import.