At present there are a number of somewhat clunky ways to connect
to data in Metastorm BPM. The primary way is the automatic data
binding, of course, and there is also the ability to read and write to
other tables and other databases. Web services offer another
popular connection point, although the method is not handled very
elegantly at present, and does not cover all possibilities. It has
improved much upon previous incarnations, but to be honest, we
still hand-craft our own.
There are other important connection points to rules engines as
well.
All of these are written and to a large part used, in either SQL or in
script.
The new approach will be to create 'named connections'. These will
connect to 'Business Objects' (more later). This effectively provides
a layer of abstraction between the forms and form design, and the
underlying data repository. If managed well, this could be a huge
benefit, and will solve many existing problems and shortcomings.
We can see a very simple 'temporary variable' option, just for
starters.
In theory, and I cannot vouch for this, any field on a form may be
bound to any desired named connection. Given that the entire
system will be based on .net, one would assume that it would be
fairly easy to write .net extensions for just about any .net
application or system. This opens up the user interface to some very
long-awaited customisation.
1. Introduction
