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Introduction

A common way to start an Oracle BPM (Business Process Management) process instance is by exposing it as a web service and calling it from an external system, web application, or mobile application. We can also achieve this in PCS, where start events are automatically exposed as SOAP web services. PCS instances can be also started using the provided REST API.

In terms of mobile development, the best practice is to consume REST/JSON web services in order to take advantage of performance benefits; using MCS is a good option. Apart from that, MCS provides analytics as well as many features that will increase development productivity.

This article will illustrate how Oracle MCS can be used as the mobile gateway for all Oracle PaaS products by explaining how to:

• Create a process in PCS whose instances can be started either by calling a SOAP web service or using the PCS Workspace
• Consume Oracle PCS REST API
• Consume Oracle PCS SOAP process web services from MCS and create a custom API that will be exposed as a REST service
• Create an Oracle MAF application and integrate it with an MCS instance where we will consume the created custom APIs

Use Case

A client requires the creation of a process in Oracle PCS. Instances of that process will be started using a form in a custom mobile application built on Oracle MAF and using Oracle PCS Workspace. To optimize the communication between the service process and the mobile client, MCS is used to transform SOAP requests into mobile-optimized REST/JSON calls.

To achieve this requirement, we will follow these steps:

1. Design and implement a process in PCS
2. Deploy the process
3. Overview of PCS REST API
4. Create a mobile backend in MCS
5. Create a connector in MCS
6. Create, design, and implement a custom API that calls the connector
7. Create a MAF application
8. Testing

Prerequisites

• Active PCS account
• Active MCS account
• Oracle JDeveloper 12.1.3
• Oracle MAF extension in JDeveloper (2.1.3+)
• Android/iOS/Windows 10 device or tester

Solution

Design and implement a process in Oracle PCS

Create an application

Before we design and implement the process we have to do a couple of things.

1. On the PCS home page, click Develop Processes:
   Click the Create button and create a new space. (A space is just a way to gather and share applications.)
2. Fill in the name of the space and click Create.
3. Next we have to create an application, so click the New Application button.
4. Fill in the form and click Create. Select the space you just created.

Your application has been created; the next step is to create the Register User process that we will start from our mobile application.

Create a process

As you can see, we can now create a process based on a predefined pattern by clicking one of the options that appears in the middle of the page.

1. Click Start with a form (see Figure 2, below). Web forms define the user interface that allows end users to interact with business processes. This will allow us to start the process instance with this web form and also from the mobile application (because it can be published as a SOAP web service).
2. Fill in the name of the process. In this case, let’s call it RegisterProcess.
3. To create the process, just click the Create button at the bottom right.
   Read the complete article here.

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