Understanding the Inresponse Service Manager
The Inresponse workflow engine provides a flexible and scalable framework that supports and augments user-defined workflows. Its primary purpose is to respond to actual system events by performing predefined asynchronous Actions when required.
The architecture of Inresponse is designed to be both flexible and scalable. The infrastructure allows for an unlimited number of Action Queues, Action Types, and Action Processors. The two primary working components of Inresponse are the MS SQL Server Service Broker system and the Inresponse Services. Insight system administrators or system experts install and manage the Inresponse Services as Windows Services. Inresponse Services perform the core processing of Inresponse together with the Insight database.
The following figure provides a high-level conceptual model of the Inresponse architecture.
An Action is known as a task when flowing through the Inresponse architecture. It is actually an XML string that contains the parameters necessary to complete the task.
MS SQL Server Message Broker
Service Broker provides queuing and reliable messaging for SQL Server. Its primary role in the Inresponse architecture is to facilitate the communication and queuing of unprocessed Inresponse tasks. As new Actions or tasks are placed into the Service Broker queue, they are arranged into unique conversations, essentially a dedicated communication channel for each Action Type defined in the Insight database. From these conversation channels, tasks are retrieved one at a time by waiting Inresponse services.
Inresponse Services (formerly known as Task Workers)
You can install Inresponse Services on one or more machines in the same network as the Insight database. The Inresponse Service, when started, creates a worker thread for each Action Type that it is configured to process. The role of each worker thread is to request and accept tasks from its corresponding Service Broker queue conversation channel and process the task with the DLL defined for its Action Type. When complete, it updates the status of the task in the Insight database and waits for the next available task in the queue.
The Insight system requires at least one Inresponse service to process Actions. You can install Inresponse services, run them interactively, and remove them using either of the following methods:
See Understanding Inresponse Processing in the Workflow Management chapter of the online Help for additional information.
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