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SOA alignment in eForms Architecture By (Mohamed Khiasudeen) Mohamed Khiasudeen is a Consultant at Wipro Technologies. He has over 16 years of experience in IT. He has worked on architecting collaboration, groupware and messaging solutions involving IBM products and technologies. IBM Lotus Forms provides high performance with intelligent document and business process rules in enterprise. Web services and XML schemas enhance the process automation. This places IBM Lotus Forms in alignment to SOA. Implementation of SOA and increasing the ROI creates a vital impact on business, IBM Lotus Forms position in this. XForms and XFDL standards Limitations in HTML Forms have resolved by XForms which has emerged as W3C specification for Web forms. XForms has the following features § Powerful feature of XML integration (XML Schema as well) § Widely used features like calculation and validation was addressed in an effective

manner § Commonality on device platform and universal accessibility

eForms access from various devices and platforms are very well address by XForms by using various controls to extract data access by allowing skinning of views in a different host languages. From Laptop access, XFDL based forms are preferred and WML access is more matching for mobile devices. XForms take care of this portability functions across platforms and devices. Driver for business and customer value by XForms § B2B interoperable process enablement by standardization in a technology and

industry transactional levels. § Enabling reusable components to integrate with industry standard SOA by forms

data processing standards § Lowering application maintenance and deployment costs and increasing the ROI

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Standadardization of XForms § XForms has wide compatibility with existing schemas used in existing industries § industry data schemas can be extended to enhance support forms processing rule § Provides detailed form definition as a enabler and extensive level of

interoperability § XForms are compatible and accessible on any device, in any language and for any

role in a business process SOA in XForms Reusable components was achieved by the data processing model standardization in Forms for the integration with SOA for the driver of increasing response time to the market with minimal deployment and maintenance costs SOA architecture is a strong participant in IBM Lotus Forms. This is achieved by the reusability inherent with XForms and making use of various services exists in enterprise applications used globally. SOA e-forms solutions are enabled with XFDL and XForms and the boundry is reduced with strong technical alignment. Below diagram depicts SOA in XForms

X-Forms+XFDL

Document

WSDL

SOAP

Namespaces XPath XML Schema

XML

URL, HTTP/HTTPS

Foundational Web Service Technologies

XForms and SOA

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Web Service Integration Here Tomcat 5.0 as a web service provider to gather data from Domino 7.0 Server for Domino Integration scenario and DB2 Server for J2EE Integration scenario. IBM Rational Application Developer Version 6 (RAD6) and Domino Designer Version 7.0 tools can be used for development for web services. Two ways a web service can be developed as below: § Bottom up: Building a WSDL description of a Web service based on a given class

or data structure. § Top down: Building a skeleton of classes and data objects based on a given

WSDL description. We always start building a class in Domino Designer, export the WSDL to RAD 6, and implement the complementary service provider using Java for the Web Sphere Application Server (WAS)/Portal environment. The reason for starting with Domino is that we had the required classes in Domino available. There is no hard stop to do the work starting with J2EE and RAD6.

Below diagram gives Architecture of Web service design using Domino 7.0 server for Domino Integration and DB2 Server for J2EE Integration

Exported WSDL (on file system)

Domino Designer 7.0

Lotus Script Class

WSDL

Workplace Forms Designer

Created Form

WSDL

Rational Application Developer 6

J2EE Web Service

WSDL

Domino 7.0 Server

Domino Web Service Provider

Lotus Script Class

DB2 Server

DB2 Client

J2EE Web Service Provider

J2EE Classes

Tomcat 5.0/WAS 6

Domino Environment J2EE/DB2 Environment

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Service Oriented eForms web applications

XForms technology has very close alignment in both technical and concepts requirements of service oriented architectures – SOA. Reusability is achieved at a functions layer with identical set of tasks and activities in different forms applications and processes. Following are some of the common and standard interactions in eForm applications include: § Server-side form prepopulation, that is, the merging of an empty form template

with data. Submission of a form into a Content Management (CM) system at various stages of a process or workflow

§ Submission of a completed, signed form to a Record Management System as a transaction record at the conclusion of a process

§ Presentation of a form to users on laptops (mobile computers), tablet, or handheld devices both in online and offline modes

§ Storage of form data into a database (often for reporting or for use by other systems)

§ Transmission of form data into one or more Line-of- Business (LOB) systems § Validation of digital signatures as part of an approval process

Below diagram the example schema of SOA eForms web application

Desktop eForm

Application

Web Browser Showing

eForm

Form Template Pre-Population

Service

Form Submission

Service

Authentication Service

Form Vesrioning

Service

LOB System Related Service

Service Oriented

Web Application

Service Oriented

Portal Application

Adapter

Database

Record Manager

LDAP

Content Manager

Line-of Business System

Adapter

Adapter

Adapter

Adapter

Client Tier Application Tier Business Tier Integration Tier

Data and Line-of Business Systems

Service Oriented eForms Web application

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Number of the services within the business tier are encapsulations of specific form application-related functionality, designed for reuse across multiple applications. IBM Domino Integration with eForms Below diagram gives a schema on IBM Domino Architecture. Users will open via browser the template database and will be able to navigate the available views with links to different XFDL forms with templates for workflow logic – like forms are routed and submitted for the concern manager/head approval and approval/cancellation of forms can be done. Users need to authenticate against the IBM Domino Directory in which this integration was setup. For creating new forms from the template, Domino server pulls the employee data based on user authentication and prepares this data with the new order number and the template form for the client to download. The XFDL form reads product and customer data using an XForms submission Service. In IBM Domino integration scenario, the web service runs against a Lotus Script agent on the Domino server. The client submits the form to the Domino server. The server extracts the desired metadata and stores the form and metadata in a Notes document. This document (metadata and stored form) is updated whenever the contained form is re-opened and re-submitted.

IBM Domino 7.0 Server

Template Database

Form Template

Submitted Forms & Extracted Data

Repository Database

Employee Data

Customer Data

Product Data

Pre-Population Employee Data

1 1

Users

2

3 4 Form Submission Form Reload

Web Services for Product/Customer Data

Diagram: IBM Domino Integration

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References http://www.eclipse.org/ http://www.ibm.com/ http://www.notes.net/ http://www.lotus.com/ http://developers.sun.com/ajax/documentation/