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Invoke

BPMN Implementation: Send task, Service task, Rule task, Message throw event

The invoke activity directs a Web service to perform a one-way or request-response operation. It specifies the participant that provides the service and the operation to invoke. The invoke activity must specify the data for the message transmitted and may specify an output variable or variable part in the case of a synchronous request-response Web service invocation. See Participants for descriptions of concepts important to this activity.

An invoke activity can be compensated, or reversed. For more information, see Compensation.

Required Properties	Optional Properties
Participant (Partner Link)	Name. See Selecting Activity Labels
Operation	Port Type
Input Variable See Input Variable. or toPart fromVariable See From Variable to Part.	Correlations. See Correlation.
	Output Variable See Output Variable and From Part to Variable.
	Input and Output assignments
	Join Condition. See Creating a Join Condition for an Incoming Link
	Suppress Join Failure. See Process Properties
	Comment. See Adding Comments to a Process
	Documentation. See Adding Documentation to a Process
	Setting Visual Properties and Using Your Own Library of Images
	Execution State. See Viewing the Execution State of an Activity or Link
	Extension Attributes and Extension Elements. See Declaring Extension Elements and Attributes.

To add an invoke activity to the process manually:

Drag a Send task
(or other BPMN implementation mentioned above) to the Process Editor canvas.

You can add a background color to the send, service, and rule tasks.

In the Properties view, select the following values:

Optionally type in a Name.

In the Participant drop-down, select New Partner Service Provider
. See Creating a New Partner Service Interface.

Select a participant's Operation from the picklist.

In the Input tab, do one of the following:

Select Single Variable from the Assignment Type
and select a variable.

Select a XPaths
or XQuery.
For details, see From Part to Variable.

Optionally, select an output variable
or a to part
. For details, see From Variable to Part.

Select other optional properties as desired.

A simple example of using an invoke activity in a process is shown in the following illustration.

For another shortcut for creating an invoke activity, see Creating an Activity by Starting with a WSDL Interface.

XML Syntax

<invoke partnerLink="NCName" portType="QName"? operation="NCName"
      inputVariable="NCName"? outputVariable="NCName"?
      standard-attributes>
  standard-elements
  <correlations>?
    <correlation set="NCName" initiate="yes|join|no"?
       pattern="request|response|request-response"/>+
  </correlations>
  <catch faultName="QName"? faultVariable="NCName"?
     faultMessageType="QName"? faultElement="QName"?>*
     activity
  </catch>
  <catchAll>?
    activity
  </catchAll>
  <compensationHandler>?
     activity
  </compensationHandler>
  <toParts>?
     <toPart part="NCName" fromVariable="BPELVariableName"/>+
  </toParts>
  <fromParts>?
     <fromPart part="NCName" toVariable="BPELVariableName"/>+
  </fromParts>
</invoke>

Example:

  <invoke name="invokeapprover" partnerLink="approver"
        portType="lns:loanApprovalPT" operation="approve"
        inputVariable="request" outputVariable="approval">

BPMN Tasks and Events

From Part to Variable

From Variable to Part

Input Variable

Output Variable

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