Storing Process and Executional Info as XML Files or in BPEL

[klsateesh]

Hi All,

I just started using jBPM and need info/comments on the following..

1) I don't want to Store the Process and Executional Info into a Database. As this system might last longer than the DB we might select to store this info in a nuetral format.

I have read that we can store the Process Info in XML Format . If so is it conforming to BPEL Standard. If not which standard it will conform to (Is it jPDL ?How tedious it is to convert from jPDL to BPEL format).

Is it mandatory that we have to use Hibernate with jBPM? Can we use EJB3.0?

Thanks
Sateesh

[koen.aers]

Hi Sateesh,

I have read that we can store the Process Info in XML Format . If so is it conforming to BPEL Standard. If not which standard it will conform to (Is it jPDL ?How tedious it is to convert from jPDL to BPEL format).

The XML format supported is indeed JPDL, wich is jBPM's proprietary process definition language. You can use BPEL using our BPEL extension, but we only would advise this on three conditions:
- the required business functions are readily available as services
- there is no direct human involvement in the process
- there is really a compelling reason to stick to standards (e.g. portability and cross organisation usability)
If any of these does not apply, we generally advise to use JPDL. Converting from JPDL to BPEL will give you a lot of headache as the models they rely on are not quite the same.

Is it mandatory that we have to use Hibernate with jBPM? Can we use EJB3.0?

Hibernate is mandatory at the moment. For releases in the not so near future, we will probably use EJB3.0 but I don't know Tom's planning on this one. In the meantime, you can happily use EJB3.0 in your projects using jBPM. Hibernate is only necessary to persist the jBPM related objects.

Regards,
Koen