jPDL and BPEL Integration

[mboldisc]

Hello JBoss Community!

I am desperate need of a solution. I need a product that combines workflow, web-services, and models the entire process. It would also need business process monitoring. Is jBPM the right solution for me?

Is it easy to combine jPDL and BPEL to create a solution similar to IBM's BPEL4People? Why isn't there more discussion about the combination of human interaction, task management, and machine logic (BPEL). I believe this is a solution many companies desire.

If integration between jPDL and BPEL is possible, could someone post or link to an example?

Thanks!

[kukeltje]

discussion: some info on... http://blogs.jboss.com/blog/tbaeyens/ but if you use google, I'm sure you can find more

You need to be more specific in what you want. calling a small amount of webservices from a human workflow: jpdl, orchestrating lots of (web)services into more complex ones: bpel

integration between jpdl and bpel is possible simply because you can call a webservice from jpdl (you need to do some work) and bpel processes are accessible as a webservice. A real example is unknown to me, but 'trivial'. It is however not modeled in one processdefinition.

[mboldisc]

Thanks for the quick response. It would be nice to model the entire process using one process-definition, but the separation of workflow and web service orchestration is acceptable.

In your opinion, is JBoss jBPM mature enough to handle the combination of workflow (jPDL) and web service orchestration (BPEL) in a real world environment (such as a bank's business process)?

When is a good time for businesses to jump on the open source BPM wagon?

Thanks for the blog article, it is quite enlightening.

How does JBoss Stream framework fit into this whole jBPM picture? Does Stream interface with jPDL easily for portal development? I still think bringing together jPDL, BPEL, and Stream? into one model would be wonderful.

Time for a rhetorical question. Is JBoss adopting BPM technologies and standards that will stand the test of time? There are just too many BPM implementations (e.g. BPMN, XPDL, ...).

Sorry for fishing with so many lines!

[kukeltje]

yes it is mature enough. Although I do not work for JBoss/Red Hat, I'm under an NDA, so cannot disclose the names, but some major institutions are using it. So the time to get on the open source bandwagon is now, honestly. But be aware that these are not end-user or pure business tools (as you've probably read in the blogs. Not only is this the case for jBPM, but also for licence-fee-required companies (I've worked with/tried several of them). Some java knowledge is needed (a little more than knowing what a classpath is)

JBoss Stream? JBoss Seam you mean... there is nice integration, although I've not worked with the integration part (I've worked with seam and am impressed)

Creating one model will result in to complex models, different concerns, different models... should not be to big of a problem... trust me..

BPMN/XPDL: You've probably read Tom's blog. XPDL is now officially the 'technical' representation of BPMN, so those 2 are aligned. Still, there is JPDL, BPEL, ebBP. XPDL and ebBP can be realized on jBPM, since the core is in fact language agnostic (as can be seen by JPDL and BPEL being implemented on the same core. Seam pageflow is btw also implemented as a 'language' on top of the jbpm core.

[mboldisc]

You have provided some great information, lets keep this going. :)

It's my understanding that three main things make a business process management suite (bpms) worthy.
1. Modeling
2. Execution
3. Monitoring

I understand how jBPM offers the first two things, but does it have any monitoring capability? Are there other open source projects which will help monitor the business process, allowing business analysts to refine the process?

I sincerely appreciate your help.