OpenText™ Process Suite Platform Architecture Learn how the platform enables customers to improve their business operations This whitepaper provides an introduction to the OpenText Process Suite Platform (Process Platform) architecture and explains how Process Platform uniquely enables customers to improve their business operations. It is intended for solution architects and other technical people who want to obtain a thorough understanding of the technical aspects of Process Platform. This paper dives into the technical capabilities of Process Platform and how these capabilities are provided. Table of Contents Architecture Vision and Goals .....................................3 Process Platform Overview .......................................4 Design-Time Architecture..........................................6 Model driven ....................................................6 Integrated metamodel ..........................................6 Team development scenario ....................................7 Anatomy of a modeler...........................................8 Standard CWS facilities .........................................9 Runtime Architecture .............................................10 Logical view ....................................................10 Deployment view ..............................................11 Node view..................................................... 12 Multitenancy ...................................................14 Overview of Runtime Services....................................16 User Interface Layer ...........................................16 Business Services Layer ....................................... 20 Service Oriented Architecture Layer.......................... 34 Security ....................................................... 43 Conclusion ....................................................... 46 About OpenText ................................................. 46 Applicable Standards..............................................47 References ....................................................... 48 OPENTEXT™ PROCESS SUITE WHITE PAPER PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE Architecture Vision and Goals At OpenText, our mission is to help our customers improve their business operations with world-class, process oriented software that they can use to change and innovate the way they do business with greater speed and flexibility. This mission is translated into the following set of architecture goals: INTEGRATED PLATFORM Results in simplified installation and maintenance, thus reducing total cost of ownership. BROWSER-BASED ACCESS Allows any user, inside or outside the company, to work with Process FOR ALL USERS, INCLUDING Platform with just a browser. ADMINISTRATORS AND APPLICATION DESIGNERS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Bridges the gap between business and IT by enabling non-technical FOR TECHNICAL AND users to participate in the development process. NON-TECHNICAL USERS INTEGRATED IN Enables creation of EIM solutions that leverage products like ENTERPRISE INFORMATION OpenText™ Content Server, OpenText™ Media Management and MANAGEMENT (EIM) SUITE many other products from the OpenText portfolio. STANDARDS COMPLIANCE Enables easy integration, thus reducing total cost of ownership. EXTENSIBLE ENVIRONMENT Drives total cost of ownership down. INTERNET AND The same platform can be used for cloud computing and on-premise. INTRANET DEPLOYABILITY LINEAR SCALABILITY Enables use of commodity hardware, thus keeping total cost of ownership low. HIGH AVAILABILITY Provides high availability for business critical systems. MULTITENANCY Enables cloud computing. ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 3 OPENTEXT™ PROCESS SUITE WHITE PAPER PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE Process Platform Overview Process Platform delivers the power and flexibility to digitize, automate and integrate processes across functions, systems, machines and clouds. These processes can be structured or unstructured giving you ultimate control to optimize your business’ perfor- mance and expand its reach. Process Platform has been built as a single product. All features are based on one technology, thus simplifying the experience. The diagram on this page provides an overview of the platform components. OpenText is unique in that it has designed a single platform capable of bridging three different process management worlds: Low-code application development, Case and Process Management and SOA-based Integration (see the three platform layers in the previous diagram). Most processes that span a business are at times structured (process) and at other times more ad hoc (case). Being able to manage processes as they go from structured to case and back again supports the reality of business. Companies benefit from the simplicity of a single system to run their businesses with the flexibility to do so as they need. Additionally, OpenText™ Cloud Service Brokerage is built on top of Process Platform to provide automated provisioning and metering of applications for the cloud. This architecture whitepaper focuses on Process Platform. A key objective of Process Platform is to simplify the development process with a low- code development option. Business users can participate in model-driven application development with an approach that is more intuitive for them. We call this approach “information-driven design” and it is an alternative way of thinking about the process. Business users can start with the information they want to manage vs. the process flow. This a different approach to the traditional process-centric development, where platforms enable business people to participate by contributing models that programmers take as input. Process Platform takes a radically different approach – the model is the applica- tion, not merely an input to a programmer. To enable that, Process Platform application development is mostly model driven. PROCESS SUITE PLATFORM x U M T E I M M Collaborative Workspace Application P C R P M M M I Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) Cloud Service Brokerage E Business M S S M Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Smart Services Grid ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 4 OPENTEXT™ PROCESS SUITE WHITE PAPER PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE The Process Platform modeling environment is built as an application on top of the Process Platform runtime environment. This delivers the following benefits: • Scalable, robust, and secure. All platform runtime features, such as scalability, high availability, and security directly contribute to the design-time environment. • Testable. No need to install another product to enable testing. • Available everywhere. Every Process Platform installation comes with built-in design capability. The full functionality of Process Platform is available through a variety of completely browser-based user interfaces. Be it system administration, modeling of applications, or an end user application such as claims handling, all interactions are browser-based. This makes it possible to deploy Process Platform, as well as platform-based applica- tions, in both Internet and intranet scenarios. It also enables quick and hassle-free involvement of new users. A new participant in a project needs only a web browser – there is no need to install anything locally. Process Platform provides support for the indus- try's most popular browsers, Chrome™, Microsoft® Edge, Firefox®, Microsoft® Internet Explorer and Safari®. The design-time environment is based on the platform runtime environment. This however, does not imply that the application needs to run in the environ- ment where it was designed. Standard development practice is to employ a DTAP setup (Development, Testing, Acceptance, and Production1). Differ- ent environments are used for the different phases of a software development cycle. The platform has provisions to package and deploy applications to facilitate this approach. The Internet deployability of Process Platform enables two scenarios: • Cloud computing. In the same way that the OpenText Cloud Service Brokerage solution is built as an application on top of Process Platform, any cloud application can leverage the Internet and multitenancy features of Process Platform. • Classic B2B or B2C. Classic business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications can be built using Process Platform. Such scenarios are usually not multitenant; the application is hosted on-premise at the owning company, but exposed to the Internet. Process Platform provides the following basic features: • High availability. Mission critical applications must always be available. Process Platform can be deployed on a network of systems, ensuring there is no single point of failure. • Scalability. Enterprises handle thousands of business processes a day. The platform is built for this task. It scales vertically (scale up), as well as horizontally (scale out). Horizontal scalability is accomplished with just commodity hardware. • Multitenancy. Cloud computing scenarios demand multiple organizations, called tenants, to share the same infrastructure. Multitenancy is a basic feature of Process Platform that can also be useful in some on-premise scenarios. • Security. With cybercrime being very common, it is crucial to harness the system appropriately. Process Platform has an advanced set of security measures, including access control lists, auditing, encryption, and sandboxing. • Service orientation. Service-oriented architecture2 is the predominant design principle for modern enterprise systems. Service orientation belongs to the very core