Tool Agent Factory
The tool agent
factory provides access to system-supplied and
user-defined tool agents.
Tool Agent Meta-data
Tool
agent meta-data are
used to register a tool agent in the factory. The basic tool agent
factory implementation that comes with OBE reads and stores
these data in the configuration
file BasicToolAgentFactory.xml.
Tool Agent
A tool agent provides
a pluggable means for invoking custom procedures and external
applications implemented using arbitrary technologies. When a tool is
executed as a procedure, it is invoked locally by the workflow engine.
When a tool is invoked as an application this is done by the worklist
handler application, which can be a console application, Swing- or
other GUI-, web-based or other application. Currently, tool agents
support console, Swing and web-based invocation. When invoked from a
web application tool agents typically either direct the browser to
display content in a separate window using the browser's native
content-handling capabilities or in a particular usage of the latter,
use the Java Net Launch Protocol (JNLP) to launch a Java applet or
application. OBE comes with a variety of tool agents.