APIM Engine is the main component of the APIM suite. It handles the transactions and delivers, deploys and also collects the information along the process. APIM is much more powerful than a traditional workflow engine since it is able to communicate synchronously and asynchronously with existing IT systems (EAI).
Because the APIM Engine understands business conditions the APIM Designer set, it can automate processes and allow you to monitor the execution through a management cockpit. APIM is able to look after technical execution issues (bottlenecks) as well as business issues. (Service Level Agreement - duration)
APIM Engine is based on the "Web Services" standard that is a broadly approved by the community - this information standard is supported by the major software development companies (IBM Corp, Microsoft Corp, SAP AG, Siebel,...).
APIM Engine provides the perfect framework to link together all the Web Services inside and outside the enterprise. Web Services are used as a middleware by APIM, and CSRbusiness ships APIM 6 with a very long list of adapters to middlewares (JMS,CORBA,SMTP,FTP,EDI,xCBL,EbXML,...)
Any web service can be called through a generic action or can be registered manually or through WSDL parsing as a specific action. (See definition of action in APIM designer) APIM Engine uses a two steps acknowledgment procedure to make sure the content was not only delivered to the Web service, but that the Web service completed the task correctly.
The Facts:
Combines a Workflow Engine (BPM) and an Integration Engine (EAI)
The Engine supports standalone debugging mode
Based on Market technology standard (WebService)
Highly distributed system (can run one many local or remote servers)
Clustering support (JMX)
High availability (parallel processing over servers/cpu)
Enhanced Security (DIME,HTTPR, Encryption DES3 - RC5, JAAS)
Enterprise APIM monitoring:
monitor all the corporates APIM instances and get system health information in a second
Have a look at the architecture presentation
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