11 Replies Latest reply on Mar 18, 2007 10:36 PM by kukeltje

    JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit

    markricard

      We want to use jBPM without having to use JBoss - much like we use Hibernate today without having to use JBoss. Is this possible? If so, can someone provide the link?

      Otherwise, the only option we see is we have to use OSWorkflow from OpenSymphony.

        • 1. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
          kukeltje

          yes, ALL the info is in the docs, jbpm is a jar with some dependency on other libs.

          I'm curious... have always been and hope I may ask you some questions in return:

          - did you look at the docs? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there
          - did you search the forum? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there
          - did you look at the wiki? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there

          and please do not respond with: 'I did not find any relevant info'

          • 2. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
            markricard

            Sure I will respond.

            "did you look at the docs? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there "
            Yes, I looked in the docs. Could not get it to work. Docs in general (even outside of JBoss) are almost never reliable.

            "did you search the forum? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there "
            Yes. Almost all of the posts from people involve using the starter kit that we found. (Examples below)

            "did you look at the wiki? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there"
            Yes. The wiki typically contains copy and paste info from the docs.

            Take a look at the following post:
            http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=74781

            Asked the same question I have at the end and there was no response from Jan 15th.


            Then look at this post:
            http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=96443

            You are supposed to do a "diff"? Really? Seems very "hacky" to me. And the post died there so you don't know if that worked or not.

            jBPM seems like quite the hog. Take a look at YAWL. (http://yawlfoundation.org/index.php) I was able to setup the workflow engine in about 15 minutes - and it has all of the functionality that jBPM does without the bloat of having to run in JBoss.

            In addition, we actually pay for support from JBoss. And many times our questions take a long time to get answered - or are answered as if we were developing JBoss core code ourselves - which we are not.

            Frankly, we feel (all 5 of us) that the answering of questions has gotten worse lately - perhaps because there are so few of you and so many more of us. (compared to 2 or 3 years ago)

            • 3. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
              kukeltje

               

              "markricard" wrote:
              Sure I will respond.

              Thanks
              "markricard" wrote:

              "did you look at the docs? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there "
              Yes, I looked in the docs. Could not get it to work. Docs in general (even outside of JBoss) are almost never reliable.

              Often because people do not put versionnumbers in there 'howtos' (a 3.0 installation procedure does not work on 3.2), therefor we in the forum always ask for versionnumbers. Not only for us to use, but also for future reference.

              "markricard" wrote:

              "did you search the forum? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there "
              Yes. Almost all of the posts from people involve using the starter kit that we found. (Examples below)
              We are aware that the search functionality in the forum is somewhat unreliable, but the question is asked often enough...people using it without the starterkit
              "markricard" wrote:


              "did you look at the wiki? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there"
              Yes. The wiki typically contains copy and paste info from the docs.


              I do not agree, but the info there could be better...

              "markricard" wrote:


              Take a look at the following post:
              http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=74781

              Asked the same question I have at the end and there was no response from Jan 15th.
              The original question was from early last year. just an example..... some real newbe (maybe even java newbies in there)
              "markricard" wrote:


              Then look at this post:
              http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=96443

              You are supposed to do a "diff"? Really? Seems very "hacky" to me. And the post died there so you don't know if that worked or not.

              Yes, since lots of people have their own security config. It is provided as a working example. In 2.0 it was also there, in 3.0 removed since so many people did not (d not?) understand how to configure j2ee authentication
              "markricard" wrote:


              jBPM seems like quite the hog.
              don't agree here either. We get lots of positive comments from users. There might be a (in fact there is a huge) difference in the knowledgelevel of users, we can't satisfy all at the moment and a certain level of java and j2ee knowledge is required.
              "markricard" wrote:

              Take a look at YAWL. (http://yawlfoundation.org/index.php) I was able to setup the workflow engine in about 15 minutes - and it has all of the functionality that jBPM does without the bloat of having to run in JBoss.
              Right, with async actions, clustering, ejb, jms......
              "markricard" wrote:


              In addition, we actually pay for support from JBoss. And many times our questions take a long time to get answered - or are answered as if we were developing JBoss core code ourselves - which we are not.
              That is something I cannot comment on because I do not work for JBoss and this forum is mainly support by volunteers
              "markricard" wrote:


              Frankly, we feel (all 5 of us) that the answering of questions has gotten worse lately -
              In the forum?
              "markricard" wrote:
              perhaps because there are so few of you and so many more of us. (compared to 2 or 3 years ago)


              • 4. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                kukeltje

                Sorry, small error (and no preview... sorry) new post

                "markricard" wrote:
                Sure I will respond.

                Thanks
                "markricard" wrote:

                "did you look at the docs? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there "
                Yes, I looked in the docs. Could not get it to work. Docs in general (even outside of JBoss) are almost never reliable.

                Often because people do not put versionnumbers in there 'howtos' (a 3.0 installation procedure does not work on 3.2), therefor we in the forum always ask for versionnumbers. Not only for us to use, but also for future reference.

                "markricard" wrote:

                "did you search the forum? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there "
                Yes. Almost all of the posts from people involve using the starter kit that we found. (Examples below)
                We are aware that the search functionality in the forum is somewhat unreliable, but the question is asked often enough...people using it without the starterkit
                "markricard" wrote:


                "did you look at the wiki? If yes, did you find or mis relevant info in there"
                Yes. The wiki typically contains copy and paste info from the docs.


                I do not agree, but the info there could be better...

                "markricard" wrote:


                Take a look at the following post:
                http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=74781

                Asked the same question I have at the end and there was no response from Jan 15th.
                The original question was from early last year. just an example..... some real newbe (maybe even java newbies in there)
                "markricard" wrote:


                Then look at this post:
                http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=96443

                You are supposed to do a "diff"? Really? Seems very "hacky" to me. And the post died there so you don't know if that worked or not.

                Yes, since lots of people have their own security config. It is provided as a working example. In 2.0 it was also there, in 3.0 removed since so many people did not (d not?) understand how to configure j2ee authentication
                "markricard" wrote:


                jBPM seems like quite the hog.
                don't agree here either. We get lots of positive comments from users. There might be a (in fact there is a huge) difference in the knowledgelevel of users, we can't satisfy all at the moment and a certain level of java and j2ee knowledge is required.
                "markricard" wrote:

                Take a look at YAWL. (http://yawlfoundation.org/index.php) I was able to setup the workflow engine in about 15 minutes - and it has all of the functionality that jBPM does without the bloat of having to run in JBoss.

                Right, with async actions, clustering, ejb, jms......
                "markricard" wrote:


                In addition, we actually pay for support from JBoss. And many times our questions take a long time to get answered - or are answered as if we were developing JBoss core code ourselves - which we are not.
                That is something I cannot comment on because I do not work for JBoss and this forum is mainly support by volunteers
                "markricard" wrote:


                Frankly, we feel (all 5 of us) that the answering of questions has gotten worse lately -
                In the forum?
                "markricard" wrote:
                perhaps because there are so few of you and so many more of us. (compared to 2 or 3 years ago)
                In the forum there are certainly a lot more noobs than before, taking up way to much of my scarce spare time

                Personally, and I do not want to offend you, the minimal knowledge people should have to start using jbpm (or any other opensource project) is to get it up and running on their own appserver (especially if it is jboss). Or get to a point where they get very specific errors. They should know how to post supportrequests in this forum (e.g. know how to read a stacktrace, the one in the screen by tomcat often is not enough and it says that in the bottom).

                If other (beginners) help eachother out (a new forum?) that leaves more time for me, other advanced user and the core developers to answer the more complex questions.

                • 5. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                  markricard

                  I agree with most of what you are saying. A newbie forum would be a good idea. And lack of version numbers is a big problem that you typically don't discover until you have gotten well into your implementation of the article.

                  but the question is asked often enough...people using it without the starterkit


                  Can you provide me the search criteria for the forums on what it is I should have typed to find out where people "often" ask how to install jbpm without the starter kit? Not looking for links... just the search criteria.

                  So far, from what we have experienced, YAML + Spring + TerraCotta is a leaner, faster, cleaner, lighter, clustered & more performant (see TerraCotta smart serialization) solution.

                  Call it a review (or humble opinion) of jBPM from a paying customer of JBoss that has over 20 JBoss instances currently stumbling along in production.

                  Thank you for taking the time to understand... it is very refreshing.

                  ~ Mark

                  • 6. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                    akpraha

                    I've also got to agree that trying to deploy jBPM according to the docs is frustrating at best. For instance, in chapter 5 of the user guide, (http://docs.jboss.com/jbpm/v3/userguide/deployment.html), we're told we can deploy jbpm-enterprise.ear. I downloaded the current production release, 3.1.3 directly from the download page, and there is no ear file to deploy (in fact there's no deploy directory, but that's another story).

                    At a minimum, if I download a package, I expect a readme.txt or an install.txt with simple instructions to install.

                    • 7. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                      kukeltje

                      @Mark: Thank you to, I love these kinds of constructive discussions and will certainly

                      Regarding the searchcriteria, I will, tonight... but there is one problem with the forum... searches sometimes (in fact I should say often) do not yield what you (I) think it should. The new jboss forum should improve this when it is released.

                      I certainly will have a look at terracotta, just to see what it does. Never looked at it, even heard of it.

                      @mark and akpraha
                      One thing I will tell the JBoss guys is that there should be a sub-version number in the docs. So a v3.0, v3.1 and v3.2 docs version should exist and the docs should be reviewed. In fact they will be for the 3.3 release, there is a Jira issue for this.

                      • 8. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                        bill.burke

                        Mark,

                        Can I get some feedback from you? You don't want to run inside application server, but do you care if JBPM (or some other JBoss.org, non-app server project) required a specific directory structure to run? How do you intend to run JBPM? In Tomcat? In your own Java SE process?

                        I ask this because we're developing an Embedded JBoss project that would allow you to bring things a la carte to non-AS environments like Tomcat and plain, vanilla Java SE. This project is designed to work in the environments classloader and designed to boot superfast. Its in JBoss AS HEAD SVN under the embedded/ module if you're interested.

                        Thanks

                        • 9. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                          kukeltje

                          ok, one day later, but a search on the forum with :

                          no AND (starterskit OR starters kit) yielded at least

                          http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=100749

                          on the first or second page.... certainly a helpful document. Some one cares to make a wiki entry out of it? Or even better, an piece for the documentation.

                          There were some other links as well, but not for someone with your high level of knowledge. I think if I refined the search I would have had some more relevant links

                          • 10. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                            markricard

                            Hi Bill,

                            In a nutshell, we are moving away from the J2EE (JEE) stack - but staying Java. I think that TerraCotta has it "right on the money" when it comes to how you should be developing your applications from an enterprise perspective. So having to carry around a big application server and manage it is bit 'old school'.

                            The current jBPM is a beast. Even when we had it working in starter kit mode, when something went wrong the "black box" was just too black. We were not sure if it was jBPM, JBoss or something else.

                            Would we care if jBPM required a specific directory structure to run? I think JBoss should always ask itself whether a constraint that they are imposing is something that a competing open source project can overcome. If you see other workflow engines requiring it, then ok... but I don't think they do.

                            We want to run a workflow engine wherever we want. We may have one instance running in Tomcat to handle presentation related workflows that would be "lighter" allowing Tomcat to do what it does best - serve up JSPs.

                            And we may want to run a heavier weight workflow in some standalone process on some server and expose it via a web service or even (gulp) an RMI call. We do NOT want it to require JMS as JMS in JBoss has proved to be a royal pain in the butt. And, it would be cool if the two workflow engines could work together seamlessly.

                            Your embedded JBoss info sounds interesting. I think you have my email so send me the info. I think you know I am a big fan of JBoss. I've been around since version 2. But times are a' changin' and you guys gotta keep it easy, slick and modular.

                            Hope this helps,
                            Mark

                            • 11. Re: JBPM WITHOUT the starter kit
                              kukeltje

                              To improve things, being it the docs or the enige or whatever could you elaborate a little on

                              The current jBPM is a beast. Even when we had it working in starter kit mode, when something went wrong the "black box" was just too black. We were not sure if it was jBPM, JBoss or something else.


                              And, it would be cool if the two workflow engines could work together seamlessly.
                              is one for Tom to address

                              We do NOT want it to require JMS as JMS in JBoss has proved to be a royal pain in the butt.
                              I've had my fair share of *beep* as well, but did you try the fully redesigned one? I've not had the time but I hear it is a good piece of work