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How an EAI Step Works

Procedure definers use an EAI step as one (or more) of the steps in their procedure. The EAI step defines what external system is being updated and what data to update. Different types of EAI step are used depending on the external system being used. For example, iProcess provides a Web Service and a COM EAI step type.

Each EAI step has a corresponding run-time (server) plug-in library on the iProcess Engine that controls the interface calls to the
external application. For example, the SQL EAI step contains the necessary interface calls to communicate with stored procedures on the SQL server.

To function properly, the plug-ins need to be registered on each server that is processing a procedure containing EAI steps. For most EAI plug-ins, this is performed when the TIBCO iProcess Engine is installed. Alternatively you can use the SWDIR\util\sweaireg utility. You can, however, design procedures using an EAI client plug-in for which you have not installed the corresponding EAI server plug-in. See "Managing EAI Step Server Plug-ins" in TIBCO iProcess Engine Administrator's Guide for more information.

When a case of the procedure is started:

•	the EAI plug-in extracts the case data from the step and sends it to the external application.

•	the EAI step can also extract data from the external application to use in the case and can be set up with delayed release so that it will not be released immediately.

The following diagram shows an example of how an EAI step communicates with an external application.

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