US 7,627,631 B2Granted

Systems and methods for collaborative business plug-ins

AssigneeBEA Systems, Inc.

InventorMike Blevins

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Abstract

Business logic plug-ins can be implemented as Java classes that perform specialized processing of business messages as those messages pass through an integration engine, such as a “B2B” engine for business-to-business messaging. Logic plug-ins can insert rules and business logic along the path traveled by business messages as they make their way through the B2B engine. Logic plug-ins can be defined and stored in an integration repository and executed in the B2B engine, and can be transparent to users. The plug-ins can utilize a plug-in framework, composed of a plug-in manager, as well as interfaces and mechanisms for plug-ins to implement. A plug-in manager can manage all plug-ins in the framework, can be a concrete implementation of the plug-in framework on the server, and can be a central hub through which all plug-in related client requests are routed. This description is not intended to be a complete description of, or limit the scope of, the invention. Other features, aspects, and objects of the invention can be obtained from a review of the specification, the figures, and the claims.

Claims24

Dependent claims

A system, comprising:

one or more processors;
a plug-in framework, wherein the plug-in framework includes a plug-in manager and a set of interfaces for plug-ins to implement;
a process engine to execute and manage workflows, and wherein the process engine executes one or more business logic plug-ins which process business messages, wherein the one or more business logic plug-ins include a home interface that allows the plug-in manager to detect deployed business logic plug-ins by traversing a naming and directory tree, and wherein the plug-manager manages all of the plug-ins in the framework and the plug-in manager is the central hub through which all plug-in related client requests are routed;
an integration studio, wherein an integration studio can be used at design time to define workflows and at run time to monitor running workflows;
an integration framework, wherein the integration framework provides router logic plug-ins and filter logic plug-ins for at least one protocol used for the business messages;
and
an integration repository, wherein the integration repository is a database that can store workflow templates and workflow instances,
wherein at least one of the workflow instances is a collaborative workflow that implements a role of a conversation definition configured in a collaborate repository, and the integration framework also provides a collaborative plug-in to allow a user to create the collaborative workflow.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.