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

[andrea.zoppello@xxxxxx (Andrea Zoppello)]

Hi David,

If you are interested you could look at spagic platform here:

http://forge.ow2.org/projects/spagic

It's licensed under the LGPL paltform.

Actually we are using STP->IM stuff and then from the IM we are able to
provide the following two transformations

IM-> JBI Service Assemby for servicemix
IM-> BPEL ( In alpha stage )

Regards your questions:

1) In spagic we provide a JBI components that is able to integrate ETL 
jobs designed with Talend, basically you must design your etl processes 
with talend and then you could use the code generated by talend by our jbi 
component

2) Regards workflow you could look at spagic workflow in spagic-2.5.x 
where 
workflow is simply another type of runtime you could use to annotate your 
bpmn 
editor..

Actually we are able to generate code for JBPM 3.2.x and in future we plan 
to support JBPM 4.X.

We are working a lot on this and we are planning to integrate form support 
for human based activities 

for more information about this: Look at spagic-workflow documents.

3) Regarding BPEL things are a little more complex, this is because is 
very difficult to produce a valid bpel file without haveing restrictions 
on bpmn model ( this is basicallu because bpel is a structured language 
instead bpmn is not ) and then bpel require partner links definitions and 
so on, so the spagic approach is that the IM -> BPEL transformation 
produce a bpel file that you must complete with bpel editor to complete.

For all the above you could have monitoring capabilities provided by 
spagic console to keep your process monitored.

Andrea Zoppello

David Wynter wrote:

> Hi,

> 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 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.

> I have read a lot of the material covering STP over the last couple of 
> days. But a few question have formed probably because I have not read 
> everything yet.

> Apologies if my language is not precisely aligned with all the STP 
> buzzwords.

> 1. Since I have many instances of an ETL involving a particular pair of 
> input and output I need to have a clear display of which ETL we are 
> dealing with. Is the annotation extension to the task icon the correct 
> way of presenting these?

> 2. Can the annotation be transformed through to the BPEL?

> 3. Do the BPEL engines allow for execution of a component using the 
> annotation to indicate to the component being run?

> 4. Since this is not a general business workflow is it acceptable to add 
> specific task icons for the specialized tasks we carry out (e.g. an ETL 
> task?)

> thx.

> David
Hi