4 Replies Latest reply on Sep 13, 2006 9:12 PM by bernhardg

    Migration from Vitria to jBPM

    bernhardg

      I need to migrate a fairly complex system from Vitria Businessware 3.1 to jBPM. Vitria has some proprietary mod format and exports XMI. I have not been able to successfully import to any UML tool.
      Any help pointing me to the right information is apprechiated.

      THX,
      Bernhard

        • 1. Re: Migration from Vitria to jBPM
          kukeltje

          Bernhard,

          pointing in what direction? A tool that can import the vitria xmi file? Or a mapping between vitria format and jpdl?

          • 2. Re: Migration from Vitria to jBPM
            bernhardg

            Sorry for the delay but I could not reply any sooner.

            I need to export about 130 workflows from Vtria and get the workflows along with the infrastructure to work with jBPM.

            Currenlty I am working on an approach representing a combination of your suggestions. I am writing a tool that transforms the Vitria XMI export to jPDL. There is also some additional information that is Vitria specific and needs to be processed. Also the geometric information exprted by Vitria does not seam to be very accurate.
            The second step is to integrate the the jPDL workflows and the proproetary information retrieved from Vitira with our existing infrastructure.

            THX,
            Bernhard



            • 3. Re: Migration from Vitria to jBPM
              tom.baeyens

              there is a very important aspect that you have to keep in mind when converting processes from one language to another.

              writing executable business processes (like the vitria processes) is writing software in the sense that you are specifying how the BPMS software should behave. this is different from analysing and describing how people and systems work together (= the actual business process). when creating the vitria processes, you have already made a mapping between the actual business processes to executable vitria processes with the constructs available in vitria process language.

              it might not always be the best approach to just try and convert the processes automatically. as the design of the vitria processes was influenced by the available constructs in the vitria language.

              overall, jPDL will be quite flexible to accomodate such a conversion. but you should take into account that you probably would have created different processes when using jPDL for your initial process langauge. so practically, the best approach i think is to create a simplistic conversion that doesn't include all the details. Then take that as a starting point. This will include a manually revision since there is no standard process language yet.

              • 4. Re: Migration from Vitria to jBPM
                bernhardg

                Thanks for you comment, Tom. I am basically going the route you suggest. I do a simple conversion and see what else I need to take into account.

                Luckily we are using BPM in a very light weight way - basically we use it as state machine and message pipe only. We do not use any Vitria rights management and only one business object. Everthing else happens outside of Vitria.

                I am currently working on a proof of concept. I plan to

                - replace the corba/messaging mechanism used for client/server communication with WebService. Currently 'events' which are actually method calls are sent over the message channel.
                - On the server side I use a BPM management object to process the 'events' and mimic what Vitria currently does.

                That way I do not need to change the interface to Vitria that is currently used.

                Hopefully, once the transition is done we can start using BPM the way it is intended ;-).

                THX,
                Bernhard