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AW: [jwt-dev] Feedback on GMF analysis
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Hi Pierre,
thanks a lot for your feedback concerning your GMF analysis. It is good to
hear that some parts of GMF are already quite mature and that it provides
already from scratch some cool tools. Your description about the bugs
is something our students experienced a while ago, so I was hoping that till
now it has improved a little bit...
I agree with your conclusion that JWT WE must provide many features so that
companies use it instead of creating their own process modeler with GMF. But
since the committers of JWT do not only work on the workflow editor itself,
but also on extensions, transformations, runtime and monitoring components,
etc. I hope that we already have a chance to get companies more and more
interested.
Of course, the workflow editor can always be improved (which would be also
the case for any GMF-created editor) and we're happy to hear about any
requirements from companies that we shall consider in our work. Maybe at
some point we will have the resources to change the core of the workflow
editor into GMF without loosing all the additions that already exist!?
Concerning the metamodel: I think that there will always be some discussion
about whether to have node A or node B, how concept C shall best be
included, etc. E.g. how can swimlanes be supported in the best way, is
XORControlNode better than DecisionNode/MergeNode. But we will finally come
to a conclusion that will fit to most requirements (I don't think it's
possible to make everyone happy). That's why I'm looking forward to the
discussion with you and your colleagues as well as other companies how some
aspects can best be integrated and what we (all together) can improve!
Best regards,
Florian
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jwt-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] Im
Auftrag von Pierre Vigneras
Gesendet: 12 March 2009 16:05
An: jwt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Betreff: [jwt-dev] Feedback on GMF analysis
Dear all,
I would like to share my "personnal" vision on our study of GMF technology
and its relevance in the case of the JWT project (and its extension).
My opinion is the following (to be short):
- EMF is quite mature and is fine to be used. But it is definitely the core
of a GMF designer. In the case of JWT, the fact that the meta-model is
UML-AD based, may lead to some problems for the implementation of a BPMN
extension (as we have seen with the And/Xor stuff).
- GMF Runtime is also quite mature now. The problem I personnaly found is
with the GMF tooling which is quite buggy and not as user-friendly as I
would like it to be. GMF is quite complex. The learning curve seems to be
quite huge (as it is based on GEF, which itself is based on JFace/SWT and
Eclipse/PDE, Eclipse/JDT, and so on ;-)).
- GMF is based on models extensively. In particular, it imposes a clear
separation between the business model (BPMN or UML-AD) and its graphical
representation. This leads to a better overall design. For example, location
of elements is stored separetely from elements themselves. We have seen in
JWT that we are facing similar problems when considering swimlanes.
- GMF makes generic/extensible designers irrelevant somewhat since it has
been specifically design to ease the making of specific designers. I mean,
if you need a new designer, GMF makes it "easy" to create a new specific one
from scratch. Therefore making a GMF designer extensible/generic may sound
strange in this context.
- GMF provides from scratch many cool stuff (ArrangeAll, Print Preview, Snap
to Grid, Snap to Object, Cut/Paste, Undo, and so on). Those stuff must be
provided by JWT, at least.
Conclusion: IMHO, there is no equivalent AFAIK, of GMF/Eclipse. Therefore,
whenever you need a designer (such as JWT), your single option is making one
from scratch (or using some API that may help a bit). In that case, you are
free to use the technology you want, and in particular, web ones. But unless
you need also an IDE (as it is the case with the Bonita designer, designing
a Business Process also involve coding in Java), Eclipse is a must. In that
case, the trend is definitely towards GMF-based specific designers. I
personnaly find that GMF has a lot of weak points (in particular the tooling
which is both buggy and undocumented) but there is no equivalent currently
AFAIK.
Finally, considering JWT, since its purpose is to provide an extensible
designer, it is quite fine to make it using GEF only (and not GMF). On the
other side, JWT will have to provide much more features in order to get a
benefit extending it instead of creating an ad-hoc GMF-based designer from
scratch.
Regards.
--
Pierre Vignéras
Bull, Architect of an Open World TM
*BPM Team*, Bull R&D
1, rue de Provence
38130 Echirolles (France)
Direct Line: +33-4-76-29-74-06
*Orchestra*, The BPEL open source project: http://orchestra.ow2.org
*Bonita*, The XPDL open source project: http://bonita.ow2.org
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