Hi Matthew,

I appreciate your reactivity and interest in these tools.

Regarding import/export capabilities I don’t think the current Eclipse BPMN tools support the tools you mentioned. I also understand the need that you have for tooling that is commercial grade and with a decent learning curve. As I mentioned before I really think we need to put more time and effort into documentation as that would massively encourage adoption. A lot of the of tools currently available under Eclipse SOA are quite mature but they severely lack in this aspect.

Feel free to watch this space and come back to us for further questions as you advance in your work. My replies to you will be archived on the mailing lists so other people might react later on. In any case good luck!

Cheers,

Adrian.

Hi Matthew,

Ok so it seems that initially BPMN will be used mostly for documentation with a view to potentially move to something that has the potential to automate things. I would be curious to follow your developments and in particular what kind of tools you’d expect to use in the future as this might give useful ideas for Mangrove developments.

Regarding the BPMN2 installation I will let the appropriate persons respond (Bob?). Regarding BPMN 1.0, did you manage to eventually install it and create diagrams with it?

Cheers,

Adrian.

                Thank you. The BPMN2 download page at http://www.eclipse.org/bpmn2-modeler/download.php indicates that BPMN2 is available for only Eclipse v3.7 , but that a version for Eclipse v3.6 will be available soon. Is there somewhere I can review to estimate how soon that might be?

                I’m looking to start with biz proc modeling and eventually revise our SW inventory according to that documentation. The SW is currently written in Java, PHP, Flex and SQL, and embedded firmware and circuit designs, with no other modeling or integration into anything but source code management tools. As we develop the models we will retain Java (but revise its codebase), and port the PHP and Flex (and some Java applets) to HTML4 and eventually HTML5, while the SQL evolves and some of the embedded code moves to Java. We also have office systems (phone system flows, email configs) and content (website, developer docs, user and staff manuals, marketing materials) that we plan to manage by at least documenting in biz proc flowcharts. So there is a tool (and business practice) vacuum for BPM to fill, that will influence the development of the SW according to its effectiveness (including our traveling its learning curve). It’s possible that moving to a BPM practice will awaken enthusiasm in the organization for the practice but will prefer different tools, so the ability to export the products of the BPM to other alternative tools, especially modularly (best tool for the specific job) will help adoption and retention.

From: Mos, Adrian [mailto:adrian.mos@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 6:04 AM
To: Matthew Rubenstein
Cc: soa-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx; mangrove-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Eclipse SOA / BPMN

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your interest and sorry for the slow reply, things were hectic this week. I am putting the soa-dev and mangrove-dev mailing lists in CC so that other people in the community can have the opportunity to help if needed.

I completely agree that there is  a severe lack of documentation especially for Mangrove. I’m planning to correct this soon.

In terms of the BPMN editor, it is certainly ready to use, in fact it’s quite a mature project approaching retirement J There is currently underway an effort to provide a complete rewrite of it compliant with BPMN 2.0, so a new BPMN2 modeller will soon be available. But you can certainly use the existing one in the meantime. FYI, here’s the new BPMN2 project page:

http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=soa.bpmn2-modeler

OK, so if you have all the components from the SOA development update site, you should be ready to create your BPMN diagrams. You should use File/New/Other and then you should find BPMN Diagram as a type of file under the “Other” category. Let me know if this is not the case.

Regarding Mangrove could you please say a few words about what kind of functionality you’re looking for (you looking to convert to SCA or other editors, starting from BPMN)?

I would also like to point you to Stardust, a very recent addition to Eclipse SOA, which provides a comprehensive suite for business process management. We are in the process of integrating this withing the Eclipse SOA ecosystem.

http://www.eclipse.org/stardust/

Hope this helps and feel free to ask questions and indeed make suggestions as you go along.

Thanks,
Adrian.

                Howdy. I want to use Eclipse (v3.6) to diagram business processes. I see that your SOA projects include BPMN and Mangrove. But I don’t see documentation for installing and getting started using them.

                In the Eclipse Install New Software… menu (--All Available Sites--) I installed the toplevel SOA Development and all items within it (except Java Workflow Tooling (Incubation), which conflicted with the non-Incubation item). But I don’t see either a new project type or new file type that I can create to edit as a flowchart. The Help… SOA > Install New Tutorials… item doesn’t find any tutorials. The project homepage has many links to either default Eclipse pages or 404. The Mangrove project, which seems to be the main featureset I’m looking for, has even less documentation on the Web (a few slideshows).

                Is the project software actually ready for users to use? I want to at least use a flowchart editor for BPMN. Thanks for your direction.

--

Matthew Rubenstein
VP of Technology

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
US Energy Group
78-40 164th Street
Fresh Meadows, NY 11366
office: 718.380.1004 x1010
email: Matthew.Rubenstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

web: www.use-group.com
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Building Energy Management Solutions

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your interest and sorry for the slow reply, things were hectic this week. I am putting the soa-dev and mangrove-dev mailing lists in CC so that other people in the community can have the opportunity to help if needed.

I completely agree that there is  a severe lack of documentation especially for Mangrove. I’m planning to correct this soon.

In terms of the BPMN editor, it is certainly ready to use, in fact it’s quite a mature project approaching retirement J There is currently underway an effort to provide a complete rewrite of it compliant with BPMN 2.0, so a new BPMN2 modeller will soon be available. But you can certainly use the existing one in the meantime. FYI, here’s the new BPMN2 project page:

http://eclipse.org/projects/project.php?id=soa.bpmn2-modeler

OK, so if you have all the components from the SOA development update site, you should be ready to create your BPMN diagrams. You should use File/New/Other and then you should find BPMN Diagram as a type of file under the “Other” category. Let me know if this is not the case.

Regarding Mangrove could you please say a few words about what kind of functionality you’re looking for (you looking to convert to SCA or other editors, starting from BPMN)?

I would also like to point you to Stardust, a very recent addition to Eclipse SOA, which provides a comprehensive suite for business process management. We are in the process of integrating this withing the Eclipse SOA ecosystem.

http://www.eclipse.org/stardust/

Hope this helps and feel free to ask questions and indeed make suggestions as you go along.

Thanks,
Adrian.

                Howdy. I want to use Eclipse (v3.6) to diagram business processes. I see that your SOA projects include BPMN and Mangrove. But I don’t see documentation for installing and getting started using them.

                In the Eclipse Install New Software… menu (--All Available Sites--) I installed the toplevel SOA Development and all items within it (except Java Workflow Tooling (Incubation), which conflicted with the non-Incubation item). But I don’t see either a new project type or new file type that I can create to edit as a flowchart. The Help… SOA > Install New Tutorials… item doesn’t find any tutorials. The project homepage has many links to either default Eclipse pages or 404. The Mangrove project, which seems to be the main featureset I’m looking for, has even less documentation on the Web (a few slideshows).

                Is the project software actually ready for users to use? I want to at least use a flowchart editor for BPMN. Thanks for your direction.

--

Matthew Rubenstein
VP of Technology

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
US Energy Group
78-40 164th Street
Fresh Meadows, NY 11366
office: 718.380.1004 x1010
email: Matthew.Rubenstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

web: www.use-group.com
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Building Energy Management Solutions

Hi guys,

This is just a friendly request to ask you all to go to this website and add your name citing Mangrove and SOA among your popular Eclipse projects J

http://www.eclipse.org/10birthday/

Takes 1 minute and helps improving visibility of the project J Feel free to forward this around.

Thanks,
Adrian.