Using Web services to consolidate IBM FileNet P8 BPM with IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules

Managing business rules and business processes

Introduction

Modern software system design emphasizes the need to use the Business Rule Management System (BRMS) to manage rapidly changing business rules. You can improve your business process agility to provide better decision methods and better maintain your software system. The Business Process Management System (BPMS) can directly take advantage of the functionality provided by the BRMS solution.

This article describes the steps necessary to integrate these two industry-leading software systems:

IBM FileNet P8 Business Process Manager's workflow for managing content and working closely with people across systems. IBM WebSphere ILOG Jrules helps organizations quickly modify business decisions by supporting real-time modification of business rules.

There are several ways to integrate these two products:

Rule Connection Framework

Java™ Component Consolidation

Web Services

This article focuses on using WEB Services to implement low coupling consolidation for both products.

Understanding Prerequisites

This article requires at least the following configurations:

Install IBM FileNet P8 version 4.5 or more versions that contain Content Engine, Process Engine, and application Engine

Install the IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules version 7.0 or above containing rule Studio and rule Execution Server

The following other useful conditions:

Familiar with Eclipse

Basic experience with IBM FileNet P8 Process Designer

In this article, you use the IBM FileNet P8 version 4.5.1 to integrate with IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules version 7.0.2.

Exploring the use cases of medical insurance

The first example describes an insurance process that uses BRMS for direct processing. BRMS is responsible for general tasks, including checking health levels, checking BMI, and calculating customer premiums. BRMS will automate the registration of minimum risk applications. and insurance personnel only deal with complex applications.

In the real world, insurance processing is becoming more and more complex, but the process of FileNet BPM in this article is simplified, focusing on the technical aspects of integration.

The insurance processing workflow for a sample scenario is composed of a system step that uses a mounted transparent decision service (HTDS) for direct processing. The Htds for the automatic insurance business is JRules. Two human tasks are forwarded under certain conditions. If HTD rejects the policy request (returns false), the workflow is forwarded to the insurance personnel for evaluation. E-mail notifications can be implemented automatically, but in order to simplify this implementation, it will be designed as a human task in the sample scenario. Figure 1 illustrates this process workflow.

Figure 1. Medical Insurance Case Diagram