Back Forward About the V5.2 Connector wizard

Description

The V5.2 Connector wizard provides an older version of the connector generation functionality provided by the Connector and Metadata Accelerator. This wizard remains in Process Commander version 5.3 to support backward compatibility.

This wizard (and the Connector and Metadata Accelerator that replaced it) creates rules for connectors that communicate with external systems through protocols or technologies that can expose information or metadata about the construction of that external application. You can use the wizard to generate connectors for EJB, Java, .NET, SOAP, and SQL.

You identify to the accelerator the source of the metadata that represents the external application or system — a database, a Java class, or a WSDL document — and then the accelerator generates the class, property, activity, and connector rules necessary for your application to communicate with that system.

Starting the Wizard

Select Tools > Integration > 5.2 Connector Wizard to start the V5.2 Connector wizard. The wizard starts.

Click the help button (Help) on any form for help about that form.

Prerequisites for all connector types

Before you begin, complete the following steps:

  1. Identify the RuleSet and version to contain the generated rules (classes, properties, connector rules, activities, and so on).
  2. Identify or create two class rules for the generated rules to apply to:
    • An abstract class rule — typically one that inherits from the Data- base class — for the wizard to use as the container or base for the generated items with the exception of the connector activities.
    • A concrete class rule for the connector activities. If you plan to call the connector from a flow, choose a class that inherits from the Work- base class, so that the connector activities can be called directly from an Integrator task.
  4. Review the class rules you created or identified. Confirm that they allow subclassing and allow rules to be added into the RuleSet you identified.

CautionThe 5.2 Connector wizard cannot create properties that have a name starting with one of the reserved prefixes px, py, or pz. For details and suggested workarounds, see the Pega Developer Network article PDNPRKB-16698 Issue: Database columns created by wizard cannot start with px, py, or pz.

Prerequisites for specific connector types

Additional setup tasks vary according to the type of connector you want to create. Following are checklists for each connector type.

For EJB connectors (Rule-Connect-EJB):
  1. Create a JNDI server data instance (Data-Admin-Connect-JNDIServer class) that identifies the EJB container of the bean you want to connect to. If this JNDI server requires authentication, obtain a user name and password.
  2. Obtain copies of these Java classes:
    • The appropriate EJB interface classes. If your EJB connector is designed to communicate with the EJB through Remote Method Invocation (RMI), you need the remote and remote home interface classes. If it will communicate through the local interface, you need the local and local home interfaces classes.
    • Any encapsulated Java classes (Java classes that are referred to as a property by the interface classes).
    • When using the remote interface and the EJB is deployed in WebSphere, the container-generated stub classes.
  4. Package the Java classes into a .jar file.
  5. Add the .jar file on the Process Commander class paths. For instructions, see Pega Developer Network article PDNPRKB-20931 About the Process Commander class paths.

For Java connectors (Rule-Connect-Java):

  1. Obtain a copy of the Java class file.
  2. Add the Java class to the Process Commander class paths. For instructions, see Pega Developer Network article PDNPRKB-20931 About the Process Commander class paths.

For .NET and SOAP connectors:

When you use the Connector wizard to create .NET and SOAP services, you must specify the location of the WSDL document that describes the Web service you want to connect to.

Before you begin, determine the URL of the appropriate WSDL file.

For SQL connectors:

  1. On the external database, create or identify a database user account for Process Commander access.
  2. Make the appropriate JDBC driver available to the application server running Process Commander. Then create a JDBC data source for the database in the application server.
  3. Create a database name instance (Data-Admin-DB-Name) that identifies the external database.

zzz SQL connectors cannot process columns of data type BIT, IMAGE or CLOB (Character Binary Large Object).

Notes

If errors occur during Connector wizard processing, the connect rule may be created with availability set to Draft/No. In this case, review and save the generated rules to isolate the source of the error; change the availability to Yes before testing.

DefinitionsJDBC, JNDI, WSDL

zzz Tools, accelerators and wizards