TECHniques

Do More with New Tools AND Products | Issue 2, 2012

MY WEBMETHODS SERVER: AN INTRODUCTION

By Satya Kommini, Senior Manager Product Management, Software AG

If you are using the webMethods product line (Integration, ESB, or BPMS), chances are that you are working with the My webMethods
Server product but you may not be fully aware of all its capabilities. If you are using the ETS or ARIS product lines, you may not
have even heard of My webMethods Server. This article provides an in depth review of how My webMethods Server plays a
critical role in providing the user interface framework for the webMethods suite and centralized monitoring and administration.

My webMethods Server plays a critical role in the webMethods
Suite, where it provides:
• A Web container for hosting custom Web, portlet, and
BPM applications
• The administration and monitoring user interface for most of the
webMethods Suite
• The Task Engine that provides human workflow capabilities to
the BPM Suite
In the following sections, I will dive deeper into the first two core
functions listed above.
THE WEB CONTAINER
As a Web container (server), My webMethods Server is capable of
serving Web applications and powering Web portals. All of us are
familiar with traditional web applications. A Web portal, on the
other hand, is a Web server that brings together information from
diverse sources in a unified way.
In the consumer world, iGoogle and My Yahoo are good examples
of Web portals that bring together information from many sources
in one place and enable the user to personalize and customize the
information displayed on the page. The portal displays content
from each information source in a window (known as a portlet) in
a dedicated area of the page; in many cases, the user can configure
which portlets to display on their portal page, and how they are
arranged as shown in Figure 1.
Composite Application Framework
My webMethods Server is built on industry standards including
Java Server Faces ( JSF) and the Java Portlet API. The JSF implemen-
tation of My webMethods Server is called Composite Application
Framework (CAF). CAF is an Eclipse-based development environment
that works seamlessly with webMethods BPMS. Working with CAF
in Software AG Designer, you can create user-centric apps with
minimal coding that combine a wide range of information sources
and services onto a single screen, and then deploy those applications
to My webMethods Server.
CAF comes prepackaged with over 200 pre-defined user interface
(UI) controls, enabling you to rapidly build your user-centric appli-
cations. Examples of available UI controls include buttons, tables,
forms, dialog boxes, charts, and maps, among many others. These
controls, combined with drag-and-drop development, make it
possible to rapidly develop user interfaces.

Figure 1: Example custom Portal using My webMethods Server

 Software AG Designer features a graphical editor you can use to
design the pages of a Web or portlet application. You create a
page layout by dragging and dropping controls from the Designer
Palette view into the active view in the design canvas as shown
in Figure 2.
FIGURE 2: Design Web pages or Portlets by dragging and
dropping controls
Along with WYSIWIG editing capabilities, you can view the application
interface at any time with Designer’s rapid deployment capability,
enabling you to review the user interface design and navigation
during development. Furthermore, the CAF design canvas is fully
integrated with the Designer Java build mechanism. As you make
changes in the design canvas, Designer continually updates the
underlying Java code.
Web Services
My webMethods Server can invoke any Web service hosted by the
webMethods Integration Server, giving you the ability to quickly
generate user interfaces (UIs) for backend services that are exposed
by Integration Server as Web services. With this powerful capability
of CAF, you can re-use any Web service managed by webMethods
products as well as put a modern interface on applications that
have run your business for years.
In addition to Web services hosted on Integration Server,
My webMethods Server can also invoke any Web service that is
exposed by your customers, partners, cloud service providers, or
SAS platforms like Salesforce.com, as long as you have the WSDL
for the Web service and authentication credentials.
2
Templates
When building Web applications, you can further streamline your
development with built-in templates, as well as create new page
templates (called template views), which greatly speed up the
design and development of pages. A template page (or view) is a
regular view used to define common areas of all application views,
such as header, footer, navigation bars, and so on.
Designer, My webMethods Server, and Task Engine are also
equipped with support for built-in, customized task applications.
You can develop dynamic and powerful support for the human
workflow activities in your organization with such features as
individual user tasks, task inboxes, e-mail notifications, e-form
support, collaborative workflow, and complete task administration
and management capabilities.
Customization
You can define the layout and look and feel of custom BPM, Web,
and portlet applications hosted in My webMethods Server through
the use of shells and skins.
A shell generates the My webMethods Server header, footer, and
portlet title bars. Where a portlet produces the primary content of
a page, a shell provides the structure that frames that primary
content. Common Web page idioms such as banners, standard
links, and search boxes appear in a shell.
You can set up many different criteria to determine which shell is
used for a particular user request. My webMethods Server offers a
variety of ways to configure personalization rules to dictate which
shell is displayed for a given user, group, or resource.
The look and feel of a page is encapsulated in a skin. My webMethods
Server offers a variety of ways to configure personalization rules
that dictate what skin is displayed for a given user, group, or
resource. For example, you can brand the page with your own
corporate logo and match your corporate colors for one group and
something completely different for another user group.
Workspaces
My webMethods Server allows portal users to create their own
personalized workspaces. Users can compose and organize their
own content and add both built-in and custom portlets to their
workspaces using a simple drag-and-drop mechanism. By default,
workspaces are private but users can choose to share them with
other users to create a collaborative work environment.
CONCLUSION
My webMethods Server is a core component of the webMethods
Suite, and plays a critical role in providing the UI framework for
the suite, allowing customers to create and deploy Web, portlet,
and BPM applications. My webMethods Server also acts as the
central point for administering and monitoring most of the products
in the webMethods Suite.

My webMethods Server gives users the added flexibility of being Read more about My webMethods Server CAF here.
able to create workspaces (or pages) with their most frequently
used portlets, arranged in a manner that best suits their day-to-day Visit TECHcommunity.softwareag.com/webmethods/products/caf
business work activities. to discover expert insights and collaborate with others who
develop with CAF.
ADMINISTRATION AND MONITORING
As a portal server with built in authentication and single-sign-on
capabilities, My webMethods Server is ideally suited to serve as
the administration and monitoring point for products in the
webMethods Suite. My webMethods Server provides administration
and monitoring interfaces for the following products in the
webMethods Suite:

• Trading Networks
• Content Server Platform
• Optimize, Monitor
• Task Engine
• Process Engine
• Rules Engine
• Blaze rules editor
• Broker

In addition, My webMethods Server provides administrative

capabilities for role-based access control, enabling you to grant or
deny both functional permissions and access permission to users
and roles, and create, manage, and delete users, roles, and groups.

Through its powerful administration and monitoring capabilities,

My webMethods Server enables you to configure access to hosted
Web or BPM application pages, portlets, users, groups and access
controls lists, as well as configure access to Task Engine Inbox or
to monitor the health of your business.
SAG_HotTopic_MyWebServices_Issue-2-2012_21Jun12

About the Author

Satya Kommini is is a Senior Manager in the webMethods Product Management team at Software AG.
He is responsible for the My webMethods Server, Composite Application Framework and Task Engine
products. His Enterprise software experience spans 15 years and includes B2B, EAI and BPM. Satya has
more than six years of experience working with the webMethods Suite.
To find the Software AG
office nearest you, please visit:
www.softwareag.com
© 2011 Software AG. All rights reserved. Software AG and all
Software AG products are either trademarks or registered trademarks
of Software AG. Other product and company names mentioned
herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.