To use the Automaton to handle a business process, create a flow processor by doing the following:
1 Model the business process as a state machine.
2 From this model, identify the Automaton entities that you need to extend.
To change the internal behavior of the Automaton to suit the requirements of a particular project, create a specialized flow processor and states by subclassing from DSEProcessor or DSEState, and define the relationships between the tag names and the classes actually implementing the behavior. These steps follow the normal programming model of the toolkit.
In addition to the standard technique, you can directly set the tag name of the flow processor to the actual name of the class that the externalizer is to instantiate. When you use this technique, the externalizer does not use the relationships defined in the configuration file. Instead, it follows the standard approach used for operations, which is to use the name of the class set as the tag name instead of searching in the toolkit configuration file for the relationship between the tag name and the name of the class to be instantiated.
3 Using the model, create a definition of the flow processor. Each node in the model has a corresponding state within the flow processor.
You can define the process in the toolkit processor definition file, dseproc.xml, or in a self-defined processor file. The self-defined processor file can also contain definitions for the contexts and formats that the processor requires that are not defined in the generic toolkit files.
To create the definitions, use any ASCII editor.
4 To implement the business logic within the process, define the flows in the processor using actions and guard conditions.
Example
The toolkit provides the following examples of realizing a complex business function using a flow processor:
▪ Managing processes in a rich graphical user interface (see Flow processor example: process management in a GUI)
▪ Managing navigation dialogs in a complex business function (a mutual fund acquisition) using an HTML client (see Flow processor example: dialog navigation controller)