The IBM WebSphere Portfolio offers software that can easily be integrated in your business or in your system, as discussed in 1.2, “The business scenario” on page 14. This chapter covers the solution for addressing the business problem.

The following topics are covered:

To meet all of the requirements for the business problem described in 1.2, “The business scenario” on page 14, several software components have to be used.

To begin with, there is a need to provide two different access channels for the users, so web and mobile access will be provided by separate services. Both services trigger the Redbooks Company Service Desk business process, which handles the execution of business rules and approvals required from technical support and financial manager to complete the process. It is highly suggested to use a single integration point that handles the transportation and mediation of incoming messages. Such a component performs the enterprise service bus role. It translates the incoming messages so that process management can understand them. The last important component of the solution is the database where all claim records are kept and updated throughout the business process lifecycle.

Figure 2-1 shows a high-level solution overview for our business case.

The following outlines the key elements that implement the solution:

The solution requires the implementation of each of the elements specified in Figure 2-1. Table 2-1 on page 21 maps the key solution elements to specific IBM software products that will be used for the implementation. These products will establish a solid technology baseline for the solution, upon which the customer-ready system can be created.

 

The final solution consists of the elements specified in Table 2-1. Each of the components has to be configured and integrated with other components. There is also a need for custom-made artifacts, such as applications, business processes, rules, and integration flows.

This is a brief list of additional artifacts that complete the solution:

Now that we described the technology that will be used and what kind of artifacts have to be produced to create the solution, the next step is to design the integration setup of the system.

The main integration point of the solution is the Integration Bus, which is capable of handling a wide variety of different protocols. To demonstrate the protocols, we choose to use WebSphere message queuing (MQ) as an asynchronous method of delivering messages from the application server to the Integration Bus. The web application will use Java Message Service (JMS) to deliver an XML formed message to the WebSphere MQ queue. The Integration Bus will listen on this queue and pick up any message that arrives.

The mobile application will integrate with the Integration Bus through a Worklight HTTP adapter, which will use a Representational state transfer (REST) service to send a synchronous HTTP request using JSON data.

When the user submits the claim form, both web and mobile applications generate a tracking number, enabling users to check the status of the request. This tracking number, along with a time stamp, will be included in data payload that is sent to the Integration Bus.

The Integration Bus will transform the incoming messages so that it will be able to persist them in a relational database, using the native open database connectivity (ODBC) drivers. Additionally, the Integration Bus will update a log file for each request, after it commits the record to the database. This log will be an additional solution feature that can be helpful for administrators in tracing whether the request came from the mobile or web applications. The last part of the integration flow that is executed by the Integration Bus will be the invocation of a business rule, which will be exposed as a web service by the Operational Decision Manager.

The purpose of the exposed business rule will be to verify if the user claim request is valid and whether it should initiate the business process. If so, the Operational Decision Manager will trigger the business process using a web service call to the Business Process Manager.

During the business process flow, the Business Process Manager will be the supervisor of the business process state, but it will ask the Operational Decision Manager for any decisions that are based on business rules (for example, to check if the serial number requires additional financial manager approval). Business Process Manager will handle the human tasks, such as providing approvals, and it will update the final status of the claim form in the database. Both Business Process Manager and Operational Decision Manager will use JDBC connections to communicate with the database where the claim form was persisted. For more details and a description of the business process used in this scenario, refer to Table 4-4 on page 93.

Figure 2-2 shows the described integration model for the solution.

The final solution will by composed from the artifacts described in 2.2.1, “Additional solution artifacts” on page 21 that will be integrated accordingly to 2.2.2, “Integration of the components” on page 22. However, there is still a need to discuss the deployment topology and configuration aspects of each of the solution components.

Figure 2-3 on page 24 presents a detailed deployment diagram of the components in conjunction with the custom-made artifacts.

As you see from Figure 2-3, some of the integration between the solution components is done using functionalities that are provided by products, such as messaging providers, but some require further development to ensure proper integration, for example, custom integration flows.

Let us start with the Integration Bus. It consists of two integral components: the Integration Server and the WebSphere MQ Queue Manager. Both will be installed on the same system. All custom integration flows with the integration logic will be executed in the Integration Server runtime environment, which has access to the WebSphere MQ Queue Manager. There will also be a single queue defined on the WebSphere MQ Queue Manager, which will be exposed to the WebSphere Application Server. The web application will use the WebSphere MQ messaging provider from the WebSphere Application Server to communicate with the WebSphere MQ Queue Manager and send the messages to its WebSphere MQ queue.

The mobile application will be running on the business user’s smart device. To communicate with the Integration Bus, it will use the IBM Worklight environment, which provides an HTTP adapter. This adapter will be configured to communicate with the Integration Bus message flow.

The business process part of the solution is running on two components installed separately:

Both products are implemented on the WebSphere Application Server runtime environment and will use its JDBC Provider features to connect to the DB2 database.

Having a complete solution, the next step is to increase its adaptability, reliability, and scalability, and also optimizing operational costs with the expert integrated system.

The best way to achieve all these factors is using PaaS (Platform as a Service) on IBM cloud environment. Bringing the solution to the cloud, it can derive advantage of other benefits like automated creation from patterns or replication of the whole solution. It is an effective way for seamless integration of the software lifecycle like from development to production, which can be created in a matter of hours instead of months.

In case of increased workload, such approach enables to respond very quickly to the demand thanks to transparent horizontal and vertical scalability. Additionally, it can be a very efficient mechanism to control and optimize the number of licenses used for the solution. On this topic, follow Rapid deployment of integrated WebSphere solutions in your cloud, REDP-5132:

With the IBM Redpaper publication, learn how to migrate from a classic, on-premises system design to a scalable cloud environment. It guides through an end to end migration process including preparation of automated scripts packages, configuring patterns, and many other considerations. It covers the IBM cloud offerings of IBM PureApplication System and IBM PureApplication Services on SoftLayer® and uses the business solution created and covered in this book.