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

[Marc Dutoo <marc.dutoo@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again

(From my use of STP IM)

On this order of things (starting from BPMN and going in different, 
complementary directions + code generation), have a look at what Spagic 
( http://www.spagoworld.org/ecm/faces/public/guest/home/solutions/spagic 
) does thanks to the STP BPMN editor, STP IM and some JET templating. 
Either it'll give you ideas, or you'll want to write your own JET code 
generation extension... Though I don't know exactly what it does for 
human tasks, Andrea maybe ?

You could also use JWT as I wrote above and write a (simple or 
composite) JWT transformation that exports parts of your model to Camel 
DSLs, using the provided basis and samples (e.g. XSL transformation, ATL 
model-to-model transformation)

Regards,
Marc

David Wynter a écrit :
> Hi again,
>
> Camel looks like a good choice, except for two things.
>
> 1. Can the BPMN be transformed to suit two coordinated execution 
> environments, one for the ESB stuff in Camel and one for the human 
> interactions with screens that depend on certain outcomes from the ETL 
> tasks executing in the ESB?
>
> 2. Is there any transformation from the BPMN to one of Camels DSLs? ( 
> Scala, Spring XML config or Fluent API) I could find nothing. I suppose 
> I could do a IM->Scala transformation...
>
> thx.
>
> David
>
> Oisin Hurley wrote:
> > 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