1 2 Previous Next 15 Replies Latest reply on Jul 29, 2009 1:06 AM by swatis

    Intalio vs jBPM

    metabyte

      Hi,

      We are evaluating the usage of a BPM/Workflow manager for both human activity and Web service orchestration. The best products we see out there are Intalio|BPMS and JBoss jBPM.

      Our requirements are:
      1) Ability to model and deploy people processes quickly
      2) Ability to put BPM in the hands of business analyst and have nearly zero-coding (no Java developer involvment exept for certain web service calls)
      3) Ability to integrate the process management on a portal, with roles integration
      4) Provide basic Business Activity Monitoring.

      What would you consider in jBPM as an advantage regrding Intalio.

        • 1. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
          koen.aers

          I don't know the specifics of the Intalio product. Specific advantages of jBPM are without doubt:
          - independence of database
          - independence of application server
          - embeddable in custom applications
          - easily clusterable and thus ready for high demanding environments
          - from a developer's perspective, highly customizable

          Regards,
          Koen

          • 2. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
            metabyte

            Hi Koen,


            Thanks for the reply.
            Is there an equivalent to Intalio Data Mapper in iBPM ?
            Intalio Data Mapper is a graphical tool inside Intalio|BPMS Designer (Eclipse based) that provides the ability to apply transformation to process variables in order to create messages, new variables, conditions, etc.

            I found this extremely practical for integration with zero-coding.

            Cheers

            • 3. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
              kukeltje

              No there is not. Although the structures we (the company I work for) need in jBPM are fairly limited since we have a dedicated 'file/dossier' system and jBPM just stores references to this dossier or som simple metadata. Some simple xslt or even simpeler xpath statements in te form of

              <processvariablename>=<xpath-expression>
              


              works like a charm. Altova has some more complex desing things (which can generate xslt, javacode etc...) if you want to do moer complex things




              • 4. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                metabyte

                Thank you Kukeltje,

                From my understanding, with jBPM you need to custom code in Java right? and support for BPEL, which is becoming a de-facto standard, is beta for the time being. How does this help align IT to business strategy ?
                Also, can you please give more details about your xslt usage?

                Thanks

                • 5. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                  kukeltje

                  custom code: The initial action you have to call is java, but that could be a wrapper to any other (scritped) language

                  Support for BPEL: Correct, beta.

                  Align IT to business strategy: I know I should not ask a question on a question but I do. Why does it (in your opinion) not align IT and business. If you read several of Tom's blog entries http://jboss.org/jbossBlog/blog/tbaeyens/about these things, I get a different impression.

                  Regarding the xslt stuff. We think that systems that provide information should not care or even know what information is e.g. needed by other systems. We use a kind of ESB like thing (very simple) that gets an xml document and uses a file the structure I described above which contains multiple lines (we did not need an xslt yet since all is simple, but you could also use an xslt to transform/extract this. Outgoing, there is an empty template xml document which is populated by using the file the other way around. This is harder to do with xslt since the source is not xml. Therefor we choose (and can still use) the simple solution.

                  hth

                  • 6. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                    torey

                    I am trying to sum up the main differences between jbpm and Intalio from a business-side of view:

                    - jbpm is more oriented towards developers / Intalio focuses on business users with little technical experience
                    - jbpm requires code / Intalio is (almost) zero-code
                    - jbpm ? / "One-click-deploy" with Intalio
                    - jbpm is beta BPEL compliant / Intalio is fully BPEL compliant
                    - jbpm does not support BPMN / Intalio does

                    - ...


                    I´m sure I haven´t covered all difference between both. I would appreciate any help with that!

                    • 7. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                      kukeltje

                       

                      - jbpm is more oriented towards developers / Intalio focuses on business users with little technical experience


                      If you read Toms blogs, you can see he (and me and others) believe(s) it will always be a joint effort between technical and business people. Even in real life it is my experience that I've never ever seen business people develop an end-user (customer) application.

                      - jbpm requires code / Intalio is (almost) zero-code


                      Depends on what you mean by code. I've never ever seen a full functional bpm app that did not require any java/xslt/script/.... in any way.

                      - jbpm ? / "One-click-deploy" with Intalio


                      jbpm to, but we (in the company I work for) deploy from a versioning system, so one-click-deploy is only needed for developers

                      - jbpm is beta BPEL compliant / Intalio is fully BPEL compliant


                      Using bpel for workflow (what intalio does with the BPEL4People extension) is by many seen as not what bpel should not be used for. Especially with the great bpml/xpdl alignment which has taken place. No need for round-trip bpel/bpmn anymore then.

                      - jbpm does not support BPMN / Intalio does


                      Correct

                      I´m sure I haven´t covered all difference between both. I would appreciate any help with that!


                      - jbpm is opensource, intalio isn't http://jboss.org/jbossBlog/blog/tbaeyens/?permalink=What_is_open_source_Intalio_sure_is_NOT.txt
                      - ...



                      • 8. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                        tom.baeyens

                        intalio is targetted towards the business analyst.
                        jbpm is targetted towards the business analyst *and* the developer without compromise.

                        • 9. Re: Intalio vs jBPM

                          Well Tom, I'm not so sure jBPM is business analyst friendly...

                          Don't get me wrong, I like jBPM, and I think is a great tool, but there are many things you need to code yourself in your PD's XML to create a process that makes jBPM more programmer oriented. However, I haven't seen a single tool capable of deploy a full process without help from IT people (don't know first hand an Intallio installation, but as far as I've seen it, I think the last is still true).

                          Just my two cents.

                          • 10. jBPM helps define the business process
                            jbpmndc

                            Most programs today put all the workflow logic in the code. jPDL is a big improvement. A business analyst may need a technical person to walk them trough a process definition the first time, but jpdl is readable. In addition, just being able to define a process in one xml file is a big improvement over many existing business applications where the workflow is spread over many - i mean MANY - files and only the developers that have been on the project for a number of years understand the business process.

                            • 11. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                              tom.baeyens

                               

                              Well Tom, I'm not so sure jBPM is business analyst friendly...


                              i didn't say we are already there. we add step by step, but always check each step against the use cases of the business analyst and of the developer

                              • 12. Re: Intalio vs jBPM

                                 

                                "tom.baeyens@jboss.com" wrote:

                                i didn't say we are already there. we add step by step, but always check each step against the use cases of the business analyst and of the developer


                                It's ok Tom, at the end of the day I think jBPM is better than Intallio, even if now it has some things to improve (and I know you guys are doing a great job).

                                Regards.

                                • 13. Re: Intalio vs jBPM

                                  I was using jBPM and I can tell that the process definition is not totally user-friendly because the nodes can be drag-n-droped and some properties and configurations can be set-up in the Eclipse Grafical plugin. However, a developer is needed to perform the java classes that will control some of the bussines logic. jBPM is very good to manage human-task but, can any one tell me if with jBPM we can orchestrate web services??..

                                  • 14. Re: Intalio vs jBPM
                                    kukeltje

                                    Technically you can, but if they are really webservices, maybe BPEL is better suited http://www.jboss.org/riftsaw

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