Introduction to the BPL Editor
The BPL Editor (the Business Process Designer page) enables you to create BPL business processes for interoperability productions. To access this page in the Management Portal, select Interoperability > Build > Business Processes.
After a period of inactivity, the InterSystems Management Portal may log you out and discard any unsaved changes. Inactivity is the time between calls to the InterSystems IRIS server. Not all actions constitute a call to the server. For example, clicking Save constitutes a call to the server, but typing in a text field does not. Consequently, if you are editing a business process, but have not clicked Save for longer than Session Timeout threshold, your session will expire and your unsaved changes will be discarded. After a logout, the login page appears or the current page is refreshed. For more information, see Automatic Logout Behavior in the Management Portal.
Areas of the Page
When you display the BPL Editor, it shows the last BPL you opened in this namespace, if any. This page has the following areas:
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The ribbon bar that the top displays options you can use to create and open BPL processes, compile the currently displayed BPL, change the zoom display of the diagram, add activities to the diagram, and so on.
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The left area displays the BPL diagram.
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The right area displays the following tabs:
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General—contains settings for the overall definition of the BPL business process. See Setting General Properties of the BPL Business Process.
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Context—enables you to define the context object for this BPL business process.
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Activity—contains settings for the selected item in the BPL diagram; see Adding Activities to a BPL Diagram.
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Preferences—contains settings pertaining to the appearance of the BPL diagram. See Setting BPL Diagram Preferences.
You can expand and collapse the right area using the double arrow icons.
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The BPL Diagram
A BPL diagram is the editable, graphical representation of the logic defined by the business process. The following is an example.
A BPL business process consists of a connected set of activities, shown as different shapes in the diagram. Activities can use values received by the BPL and make decisions based on them, they call other business components, they can manipulate data, and they can call custom code. The process of creating a BPL business process consists primarily of defining the activities it includes and connecting those activities.
