[news.eclipse.stp] Re: Is BPMN and BPEL the right choice for my problem?

[oisin.hurley@xxxxxxxxx (Oisin Hurley)]

Hi David,

David Wynter wrote:
> I have a set of components that I use in workflows to basically do value 
> added ETL work with reported outcomes etc. It currently has a Web 
> interface and uses a FSM (blissed.codehaus.org) interleaved with the 
> Quartz scheduler. All data about the ETL reports, scheduling etc is 
> stored in the database, no files involved.

I'm trying to picture this... you have a number of workflows, that are
performing ETL tasks. The workflows are implemented using a FSM
and a Quartz scheduler. There are reports generated as the result of
a workflow happening. I'm simplifying here a bit, I know, but I'm
trying to cut it down to some core capabilities...

> I want to now extend this to incorporate tasks for humans to handle 
> through dedicated screens in amongst the workflow. So time for a richer 
> graphical representation of the workflow. The BPMN modeller and 
> transformation to IM and thus to BPEL look like a good starting point. I 
> would replace the Quartz and FSM workflow with a BPEL execution engine.

The BPMN modeller would be a good choice for presenting your flows,
I think. I'm not so sure, however, about whether BPEL is really where you
want to go. BPEL has a number of specific technology requirements (in
the general case) that you might find puts more pressure on your existing
architecture than you want.

For example, is your architecture based on web services? If not, BPEL means
that you will need to express the endpoints that you are coordinating as
web services. This may mean you need to use adapters to the real sources.
This can be a lot of overhead. From the details you mention of your system
I think that maybe something like Apache Camel could help you out in a
lighterweight way :  http://camel.apache.org

Antoine will no doubt answer the BPMN modeller related questions
you have :)  One thing to point out is that STP doesn't provide a way to
turn BPMN to BPEL, so that will be an issue.

best regards
  Oisin