Store Integration Properties in Configuration Files By Ray Moser

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Introduction

A recent project's Business Requirements stated that a generic set of services must be created to store and retrieve partner properties. The eventual solution featured a XML-based "profile" which will be discussed below.

This article examines a very small portion of the project's actual production-enviroment XML profile. The element names and data structure have been changed to protect the innocent (and help me keep my job); the functionality has not been removed.

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Why Take This Road?

After due diligence was performed, the following was determined:

1. The Data Repository is preferred to Java-based properties files because Java-based files are one-dimensional only(i.e. key = value). The Data Repository is multi-dimensional (i.e. store: key = value) where value is any supported webMethods object
2. XML documents can be edited using any Text Editor, the Data Repository cannot
3. webMethods Records reflect XML structure
4. webMethods Records can be stored in the Data Repository

All this to say: the solution loads XML property files into a record which is then stored in its own Data Repository store.

The following development steps support this methodology:

1. Analyze existing code and determine which variables/parameters to store
2. Create DTD and XML profile to store data.
3. Build a webMethods Record to store data in the pipeline and in the repository.
4. Generate Flow to extract data from the repository.
5. Test the Flow
6. Deploy the package

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A Look at the Package

These principles are illustrated in the package wMUsersProfile. The package contains three interfaces -- methods, records and schedulers -- and is shown below:

The wMUsersProfile Package

Not shown in the graphic is the wMUsersProfile package Startup/Shutdown/Replication tab. Load the package on your local Integration Server and note the following properties:

• Startup/Activate: The XML Profile is read and stored in the repository
• Shutdown/Deactivate: The repository is emptied and removed

Also not shown is the wMUsersProfile package's /config directory. This directory is home to both the DTD and the XML Profile documents. These files are read by the startup services discussed above. No additional setup steps are required.

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The Key Flows of the wmUsersProfile Package

There are three Flows that govern the wmUsersProfile package. They are:

1. wmUsers.methods:getProfile
   This Flow displays the IData record containing the profile. It gets the proper directory from the data repository.
   
   
2. wmUsers.methods:getTestDataFromProfile
   This Flow invokes several child Flows to gather HTTP properties, FTP properties, SMTP properties, file directory information, and partner data.
   
   
3. wmUsers.methods:setScheduler
   This Flow creates Scheduled Services in the webMethods Administrator. Because the profile contains enough information to satisfy the inputs for pub.scheduler:addRepeatingTask, this flow demonstrates how a profile could be used to support Process Automation.

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