Introduction to PEGA-PRPC

Pega/PRPC is a popular rules engine and BPM tool from Pega systems that is gaining good market share among large corporations. Architects and developers build the Pega/PRPC instance while administrators and even select business analysts have the option of changing workflow rules during runtime. Infact, their motto itself is "Build for change". The goal is to "eliminate software coding" and "automate manual work" to the minimum and build complex systems at the enterprise level with features right out-of-the-box.

That's how it works in the utopian world. But in the real world, you need good developer support. So the lesser the code, the closer you are to the goal of a true BPM tool. Software coding might be reduced drastically. But you still need people with a development background using inputs from Business Analysts to make changes or add functionality. Pega/PRPC is pretty expensive so they primarily target any corporation that can afford such a luxury.

PEGA-PRPC History

Since 1983, Pegasystems has been a pioneer in bringing business rules into Business Process Management (BPM) technology and is now widely recognized as a leader in the industry.

Business rules are the practices, processes, and procedures that define how a company does business; they are an important asset that differentiates enterprises in the marketplace. Pegasystems' patented rules technology allows companies to aggregate their diverse business practices and lets business managers rapidly implement change across the enterprise and over the Web.

Blue-chip companies in financial services, healthcare, insurance, communications, and many other industries, turn to Pegasystems to streamline business processes, to quickly and easily adapt to changing market conditions, and to realize significant ROI.

Alan Trefler, Pegasystems' Founder, Chairman, and CEO, has guided the Company's technology vision. This vision has repeatedly positioned Pegasystems on the forefront of industry trends — often well before these trends have become widely accepted in the marketplace. Mr. Trefler's early experiences teaching computers how to play chess provide the intellectual foundation for his thinking on the importance of rules and automated decisioning.

From best-of-breed rules-based exception-processing solutions in the 1980s to enterprise rules-based customer-service solutions for call centers in the 1990s to today's rules-based Pega BPM solutions for the extended enterprise, Pegasystems empowers the aggressive business strategies of many of the world's most dynamic organizations.

Integration In PEGA-PRPC

Most applications require access to data that is provided by another system, or they need to respond to requests from other systems for data or computations. Process Commander provides integration facilities that support interactions between its applications and external systems, databases, Web sites, e-mail servers, and so on.

In Integration situations, a Process Commander application can act as either the client or the server, communicating with both back-end and front-end applications.

By using these features, Process Commander can exchange information with many kinds of external systems like

-Relational databases

-Enterprise Information Systems (EIS)

-e-mail servers

-Excel spreadsheets

-Text files.

Process Commander interfaces support a wide range of technologies and standards, including

•  HTML
• Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
•  Microsoft .NET
•  Sun Microsystems Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB)
•  IBM WebSphere MQ® messaging
•  Java Message Service (JMS)
•  J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA)
•  Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)
•  JSR 94
•  JSR 168

These interfaces are called integration services

TYPES OF INTEGRATIONS IN PEGA-PRPC

Process Commander offers many approaches, technologies, and facilities collectively known as Integration. They include:

• Connector

• Service

Internally, these facilities are in the Pega-IntSvcs RuleSet

DATA MAPPING IN PEGA-PRPC

When you configure a service or a connector you also match or correlate the properties in the process commander application to the corresponding data fields or properties in the external system. This is called Data mapping.

Advantages of Pega RULES Process Commander

BPM products that focus primarily on workflow or integration capabilities, Process Commander leverages the PegaRULES engine to enable organizations to manage complex business processes -- including those with a large number of exceptions, or those where tasks, sub-tasks, or decisions have to be delegated to many individuals across (and beyond) the enterprise. In addition, since changes to business processes can be made by modifying or adding business rules (either via a Microsoft-Visio-based editor or browser- based HTML forms), Process Commander makes it possible for business analysts and power users to customize a business process.

For example, business analysts can diagram a business process using Microsoft Visio. Visio serves as the graphical front end to Process Commander's rulebase, and dynamically communicates with the rulebase to select, validate and save processes. By placing Process Commander SmartShapes on a Visio worksheet, business analysts can link activities together to create an automated process. Visio then presents the visual form of the flow and, based on the SmartShape that is utilized, the PegaRULES Engine automatically presents the correct rule form. As a result, Visio diagrams utilized in Process Commander are "live" diagrams -- empowering business managers to evolve and define how processing applications work in real-time as they modify these diagrams on-the-fly. Versioning capabilities also enable business users to adjust to changing business requirements and quickly implement required processes.

The Process Commander server runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Solaris and AIX, and utilizes leading applications servers including IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic and Apache Tomcat. Process and business rules reside in a common rulebase, which may run on Oracle, Microsoft SQL and IBM DB2 relational databases. This combination of a distributed server architecture and centralized rulebase running in heterogeneous environments provides a range of scalability and deployment options.

Additional features of Process Commander include:Browser Interface: Used for all development and application functions.Support of Complex Processes: Includes a wide variety of assignment, worklist, process and reporting functions to improve work efficiency.Service Level Agreements: Enable users to manage actions and prioritize work.

In addition to these capabilities, Process Commander supports Directed Web Access, which enables customers or users outside of an organization's firewall to contribute to a process. For example, a customer could be directed to a one-time secure Web URL where they could fill out a request for service or similar form. All rules and processes within the system can also be exposed as Web services, enabling other applications to access or invoke them as appropriate.