Building an Ajax service

Build an Ajax service when you want a coach view to send data to or retrieve data from the server asynchronously, such as for auto-completion in text fields, for default selection values in selection lists, and so forth.

Before you begin

To perform this task, you must be in the IBM® Process Designer desktop editor.

To create services, you must have access to a process application or toolkit in the Process Center repository. Access to process applications and toolkits is controlled by users who have administrative rights to the repository. For more information, see Managing access to the Process Center repository.

Procedure

  1. Open the Process Designer desktop editor.
  2. Open a process application in the Designer view.
  3. In New Service, enter a name for the service and click Finish. IBM Process Designer displays the diagram of the service with the default Start Event and End Event components.
  4. Add variables that the service will use as input or output. You can also add private variables. See Declaring variables for a BPD or a service in Process Designer for information.
  5. Add components to the service diagram and then set up the sequence flow.

    For more information about components, see Service components in Process Designer.

  6. Configure the components in the sequence flow. For example, if you are using a Server Script component, add a script in the Implementation properties.
  7. Save changes. The Ajax service is available for use in Coach Views.
    Attention: You cannot automatically synchronize shared business objects for Ajax services. The Automatically Sync Shared Business Objects setting is always disabled

Example

To view an example of an Ajax service, the following Ajax services are provided in the Coaches (8.0) toolkit: Coaches Localized Messages Loader, Default Autocompletion Service, and Default Selection Service.