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Re: [jwt-dev] About workflow integration with JWT

Hi Pablo

To make it short, you're right : jwt-monitoring will be built on jwt-runtime-apis, but we're still working on this, it'll be done in April. We want jwt-runtime-api to be a decoupling API layer exposing workflow engine features (process runtime model as well as instance and task management, workflow events, task implementations including SOA layer). Once you've implemented these APIs, jwt-monitoring will work with it out of the box, among other features. And we're finalizing in SCOrWare a sample implementation of jwt-runtime-apis on top of Bonita workflow engine and Frascati service platform.

So as Florian said,you have to implement jwt-runtime-apis and especially WorkflowService on top of Shark and expose it as a web service. To ease this work, if you're interested we can provide you with a packaging of Frascati in its own classloader, that will allow you to expose a java service as an SCA-configured web service without risking dependency conflicts. I'll be able to help you more on the 5th onward.

Note that the idea is to put apis, generic and EPL-compatible stuff in jwt-runtime, and the sample SCOrWare implementation (which is LGPL by the way) in a new OW2 project called Scarbo. However Scarbo is still in the OW2 submission process. Once this will be sorted out (hopefully by mid january) everything will go faster. I can put you as an interested party on the Scarbo OW2 project proposal (see below), are you interested ?

Regards,
Marc


PS About OW2 Scarbo :

** UPDATE with Florian feedback (thanks Flo !) and more mailing lists **


Hi all

As you're probably aware of, Open Wide is about to submit a new project proposal to the OW2 consortium : Scarbo (formerly JWT4SCOrWare, JWT4OW2 etc).

This implies filling a form with quite a lot of information. I've tried to answer required questions with as much accuracy as possible, but it's obviously not complete as it is because YOU are involved and have therefore information of you own to add.

We'll submit it on wednesday, so please by then reply to this mail, enrich it and correct what you feel is wrong.

NB. the submission website is at http://forge.objectweb.org/register/projectinfo.php

Regards,
Marc


1. Project full name (description)

TODO Vote :
+2 Scarbo - an open, SOA ready, SCA powered BPM solution built on OW2 and Eclipse. +1 Scarbo - an open, complete, flexible, SOA ready, SCA powered, OW2 and Eclipse-based BPM solution
Scarbo - bringing SOA to BPM
Scarbo - SOA for workflows
Scarbo - open SOA integration for workflows
Scarbo - open SOA for workflows platform
Scarbo - an OW2-based Eclipse JWT runtime
jwt@runtime - an OW2-based Eclipse JWT runtime
jwt@runtime - an open source integration Eclipse Java Workflow Tooling on OW2 components

2. Project Purpose And Summarization

2.1 Project information

Scarbo is an open, complete, SOA ready, SCA powered, OW2 and Eclipse-based BPM solution.

What does Scarbo consist in ? It builts on top of the Eclipse Java Workflow Tooling (JWT) generic tooling suite, the OW2 Bonita workflow engine and the SCA-implementing Frascati service platform, as well as other tools developed and demonstrators by fellow partners of the SCOrWare ANR project. It is actually the implementation of the "JWT for SOA" vision that uses the SCOrWare service platform as its runtime, and therefore a good JWT integration showcase as well.

More precisely, at this time Scarbo comprises :
* an implementation of the JWT WAM Task Engine Framework's Engine API on top of the OW2 Nova Bonita workflow engine * a portable (thanks to its own classloader) integration of the OW2 Frascati open SCA implementation in the OW2 Nova Bonita workflow engine, comprising flexible SCA definition generation. * an implementation of the JWT WAM Task Engine Framework's Service API on top of OW2 Frascati * additional SOA and BPM oriented features, tools (ex. a workflow monitoring Eclipse plugin) and demonstrators building on those, for now notably SCOrWare-produced material


2.1.1 Description of the project and its goals

Scarbo aims to prove, using SCA standard and mostly OW2 components, that Open Source, BPM and SOA are a match in heaven that solves traditional BPM pitfalls, and brings together orchestration and workflow paradigms.

Scarbo aims to bring BPM use cases (and not only service orchestration, but rather business-driven, top-down-designed workflows) to service infrastructures. Many analysts (TODO) believe that while SOA methodology and related technology adoption is gaining strong momentum, SOA's concepts are still too difficult to understand by end users (within the enterprise information system) for it to achieve its true goal of business agility, and that thanks to its business-driven approach and integration, BPM is actually the "killer application" SOA has been waiting for. Beyond SOA, the other trend within information system integration is REST and so-called "Web 2.0" integration, to which SOA as a methodology can also apply and Scarbo's benefits seek a longer term application field.

Scarbo aims to side
* with OW2 Frascati in promoting the Frascati SCA implementation, with OW2 Bonita in promoting the Nova Bonita workflow solution * with OW2 Frascati, Obeo and PEtALS ESB in promoting open, heterogeneous, non-intrusive service integration technologies like SCA. Notably Scarbo will provide features that will be useful for any SCA implementation, like flexible SCA definition generation. Hopefully this will allow Scarbo to be listed on http://osoa.org/display/Main/Implementation+Examples+and+Tools (for now only SCOrWare is listed). * with Eclipse JWT and its partners like Bull and jBoss in promoting open, flexible, consistent tools and engines in the BPM field

2.1.2 Targeted audience

Target audience of Scarbo consists of:

* SOA-minded information system managers
* SOA-minded information system integrators
* SOA-minded BPM vendors and users

Open source projects that are the most similar are those trying to achieve SOA or information system integration within business processes. However most of them consist in BPEL engines integrated in ESBs (like Apache ServiceMix, OW2 PEtALS) and thus rather orchestration oriented, while Scarbo's approach is definitely business-driven and its design focuses on the workflow domain. Therefore Scarbo is for their audience a meaningful alternative.

2.1.3 Supporting team

Open Wide SA provides the core Scarbo team :
* Marc Dutoo, Head of Open Wide R&D Department and SOA expert
* Mickaël Istria, Open Source Architect

Other partners collaborate on Scarbo-integrating demonstrators :
* TODO OW@INRIA on an open source project forge and portal-themed demonstrator * TODO EBMWebSourcing and Thalès on an Information System Monitoring-themed demonstrator

Other organisations are experts on target topics and can be counted as friends : * the Bull Bonita team, who are building their new workflow design tools on top of Eclipse JWT as well
* the University of Augsburg, who co-leads Eclipse JWT
* Eclipse JWT and STP teams at large

Current financial supports for Scarbo are provided by:
* Open Wide clients and internal R&D
* the SCOrWare research project funded by ANR until April 2009
* the SEISMIC ITEA research project under late stage funding negociation until 2011
* other research projects in early stage funding negociation
* TODO others ?

2.1.4 Business model

Many analysts (TODO) believe that while SOA methodology and technologies adoption is gaining strong momentum, SOA concepts are still too difficult to understand by end users (within the enterprise information system) for it to achieve its true goal of business agility, and that thanks to its business-driven approach and integration, BPM is actually the "killer application" SOA has been waiting for. Beyond SOA, the other trend within information system integration is REST and so-called "Web 2.0" integration, to which SOA as a methodology can also apply and Scarbo's benefits seek a longer term application field.

Scarbo's core is developed by Open Wide SA, a french Open Source integrator. For Open Wide, Scarbo, along with JWT, will nurture its image of an Open Source and integration expert, and offer a ready-to-use SOA + BPM framework to build on in order to answer its clients' integration needs. Other integrators can use Scarbo as such.

The Scarbo and JWT solution can be integrated by other process engine developers.

INRIA, by jointly developing a demonstrator, expects to gain an international visibility into the SOA arena by exposing results of its research activities.

EBM WebSourcing jointly develops a demonstrator, to which Scarbo brings the benefit of showcasing BPM-oriented uses of its PEtALS ESB.

2.1.5 User community

In the context of the SCOrWare ANR-funded research project (see at http://www.scorware.org),
various industrial demonstrators are built that use Scarbo.

Scarbo will be showcased as the reference implementation of Eclipse JWT's "WAM" runtime API.

More generally, the user community for Scarbo encompasses the BPM and SOA arenas, especially in the context of friend OW2 and Eclipse communities.

2.1.6 Internationalization

Documentation, logs and errors produced by Scarbo are written in English, tooling is internationalized or in the course of becoming so.

2.1.7 Roadmap

Short-term roadmap:
* Move from scorware.org to ow2.org
* Complete, improve, stabilize implementation
* Contribute documentation, samples, demonstrators
* Nurture its community, especially through its ties with Eclipse and OW2 BPM, SOA and middleware-themed projects

Long-term roadmap:
* Go further along the integration path, for instance : integrate other process engines, like Bull and jBoss's Process Virtual Machine, and develop tools for their specific features ; integrate other service platforms, like the PEtALS ESB or Apache CXF, and develop tools for their specific features ; think about other integration standards, like JBI or OSGI * Go further along the feature path, for instance : provide useful process task implementations on top of open source runtime technology and especially OW2 components, like process monitoring runtime and tools. * Go further towards opening up and unifying the world of business processes, as championed by Eclipse JWT, for instance : further unify workflow and orchestration paradigms, allow one process engine to call another in a design-to-runtime streamlined manner

2.1.8 Hosting

N/A

2.2 Your project and OW2

2.2.1 OW2 components

Scarbo integrates OW2 Bonita and Frascati. Transitively, it uses other OW2 components like Fractal, ASM and Monolog.

2.2.2 Synergies

All OW2 middleware are welcome to be integrated as service or mean of message exchange, either directly or (preferrably) within Frascati.

All OW2 process platforms are welcome to integrate Scarbo to get access to SOA features in a unified way.

Such collaborative developments can afterwards go in Scarbo or in another, more meaningful OW2 component.

Additional potentially interested parties include :

2.2.3 Technologies and standards

Scarbo is implemented in Java 5.
Its build process is based on Apache Maven.
Scarbo's runtime is built on OW2 Frascati (and its SCA standard) and Nova Bonita (and its XPDL standard, and process engine-unifying Process Virtual Machine). Scarbo's tooling is built as extensions of Eclipse JWT (especially its workflow editor, EMF-based metamodel and ATL-based transformations) and also includes Eclipse STP tools (especially its SCA editor). Transitively, Scarbo also reuses a lot of open source libraries and frameworks.

2.2.4 Contribution to the OW2 Community

The benefits for OW2 to host our project are:

* Integrating several OW2 projects together, not only in a way that is useful, but also in an open, flexible architecture

* Providing crucial reciprocal SOA + BPM benefits, on top of OW2 middleware

* Championing solutions that integrates OW2 middleware on the runtime side and official Eclipse tools on the design side, up to making OW2 a straightforward runtime choice for the Eclipse community (especially of the Eclipse JWT and STP projects), but also to bring OW2 closer to users of more business-targeted tools like workflow tools.

* Bringing OW2 closer to Eclipse JWT (which involves Bull, jBoss) and contributing to its vision of unifying the field of open source business process management.


2.3 Motivations to join the consortium and its community

Scarbo has been developed in an OW2 friendly context :
* it has been developed within the ANR SCOrWare project (which already bore the new OW2 Frascati project) and in collaboration with the Eclipse Java Workflow Tooling (JWT) project * it integrates and extends the Eclipse JWT and STP projects, which are OW2 friend projects as well [*]. [*] On the organisational side, among JWT board members can be counted Alain Boulze of OW@INRIA and Miguel Valdez of OW2 Bonita and Technical Committee. On the technical side, OW2 Bonita is a supported runtime platform of JWT, and INRIA-developed STP Intermediate Metamodel is integrated as well.

In addition to being mainly middleware, Scarbo's architecture and implementation have been designed for an OW2 runtime environment : * its runtime architecture fully builds on OW2 middleware components : Nova Bonita, Frascati...

Scarbo's contributors have been involved in the OW2 community for a long time : * Open Wide has OW2 membership, belongs to the OW2 ESB initiative, has contributed lots of features to OW2 PEtALS including OW2 Bonita and OW2 XQuare integration * Beyond being an OW2 individual member and evangelist (OW2 TechDays '08) and having worked on much of what's said above, Marc Dutoo is one of the co-leads of the Eclipse Java Workflow Tooling (JWT) project. He also is a long time contributor to OW2, having worked on JOnAS back in 2001, then on Kilim in 2001-2004
* other Scarbo friend organisations include OW2 PEtALS, OW2@INRIA


2.3.1 Hosting

Currently, Scarbo is hosted on the SCOrWare site (http://www.scorware.org).
This site was set up to facilitate the collaboration of the ANR SCOrWare partners during the project's duration (2007 - April 2009). Now is the right time to make Scarbo publicly available, and OW2 is the natural place to do it.

The transition from scorware.org to ow2.org will consist in the following steps: 1) Create several OW2 Scarbo mailing lists for announces, users & developers.
2) Move the Scarbo base code from the SCOrWare SVN to OW2 Forge.
3) Rename packages from to org.ow2.
4) Use the OW2 Maven repository for storing Scarbo artefacts.
5) Set up the OW2 Scarbo Web site, a blueprint of which has already been written and privately available at http://www.scorware.org/projects/SCOrWare/Documentation/JWT4SCOrWare (copies of its text are available by email on demand)


2.4 Other Information?

N/A

3. License

GNU Library Public License (LGPL)

5. Description publique du projet

Scarbo is an open, SOA ready, SCA powered, OW2 and Eclipse-based BPM solution.

Why Scarbo ?
Scarbo aims to prove, using SCA standard and mostly OW2 components, that Open Source, Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are a "match in heaven" that at the same time empowers SOAs, solves traditional BPM pitfalls, and finally brings together orchestration and workflow paradigms.

What does Scarbo consist in ?
It builds on top of the Eclipse Java Workflow Tooling (JWT) flexible tooling suite, the OW2 Bonita workflow engine and the SCA-implementing Frascati service platform to provide a complete BPM + SOA platform. It is actually the implementation of the "JWT for SOA" vision that uses the Frascati service platform as its SOA runtime, and therefore a good JWT integration showcase as well.

More precisely, at this time Scarbo comprises :
* an implementation of the JWT WAM Task Engine Framework's Engine API on top of the OW2 Nova Bonita workflow engine * a portable (thanks to its own classloader) integration of the OW2 Frascati open SCA implementation in the OW2 Nova Bonita workflow engine, comprising flexible SCA definition generation. * an implementation of the JWT WAM Task Engine Framework's Service API on top of OW2 Frascati * additional SOA and BPM oriented features, tools (ex. a workflow monitoring Eclipse plugin) and demonstrators building on those.


6. Project Unix Name

Unix Name: scarbo

Pablo Beltran a écrit :
Hi,

OK. I'll wait for the Mickael's answer. But I'm quite confused about why the monitor process is not build on the jwt-runtime-api (I've read some papers -parts- from SCOrWARE and it seems like communication layer).

Regarding your comment in the 5th point and my previous email I would like integrate Shark workflow with the JWT Workflow Editor. IMO I'm very close to achieve it because I've all the parts to do it comming from the YAPROC project (www.upversion.com <http://www.upversion.com>). Internally, YAPROC uses JaWE to paint the processes through a well defined API, so I only need replace JaWE by your JWE editor (I hope).

Might you give some indications about how to start with this task?

Thaks in adavanced,
Pablo


2008/12/29 Florian Lautenbacher <florian.lautenbacher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:florian.lautenbacher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>

    Hi Pablo,
JWT is ought to work not only with one specific engine (like
    Bonita, allthough many examples are currently connected to that
    one), but with all kinds of process engines or workflow engines.
    Therefore, we are currently developing extension mechanisms: if
    some engine does need additional information that cannot be
    covered with the current metamodel (which is in the process of
    change anyway, see [1]), then it can be extended with new
    properties, new node types, etc.
The process after that would be similar to what you already described: 1) Draw the process model in the JWT Workflow Editor (WE)
    2) Add some engine-specific details
    3) Export the workflow in a suitable format (this might be XPDL,
    BPEL or any other language such as the JBoss-specific jPDL)
    4) Deploy the workflow on the process engine (we would like to
    have a mechanism directly in Eclipse for that, but currently
    didn't have the time for that)
    5) Monitor the process on the workflow engine. The jwt-monitoring
    is a first draft to show that this is possible in Eclipse, but
    still dependant on Bonita, other implementations will come and are
    welcome from contributors, of course, too.
    6) Concerning the jwt-runtime-api: this has been created as part
    of a French research project called SCOrWare. Since I have not
    been involved here, others are problably better to comment on that
    (Marc, Mickael?).
Best regards and a happy new year, Florian [1]
    http://following-flo.blogspot.com/2008/12/reviewing-jwt-metamodel.html

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    *Von:* jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx>
    [mailto:jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx>] *Im Auftrag von *Pablo Beltran
    *Gesendet:* 28 December 2008 06:58
    *An:* jwt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jwt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
    *Betreff:* [jwt-dev] About workflow integration with JWT

    Hi,

    I would like to integrate other workflow with JWT rather than
    Bonita and doing only at the graphical level.

    Which are the steps to achieve it?

    1. Draw the process into the JWT Workflow Editor
    2. Export the workflow to the XPDL format
    3. Load the XPDL into the external workflow
    4. Mapping real users with participants (external workflow)
    5. Reflect what is happening via the *jwt-monitoring(-test) *into
    Eclipse (like highlight activities, participants,
    application/tools,...).
    6. Not sure about whether using the *jwt-runtime-api *would be
    necessary...

    Might someone clarify this?

    Best regards,
    Pablo.





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