Evaluating jBPM : compliance with workflow patterns

[oschmitt31]

Hi,

i'm currenty evaluating jBPM for my company (40 000 people).

jBPM overview tells us :

"One piece of research is especially valuable - Workflow Patterns. Prof. Wil van der Aalst has created a catalogue of workflow patterns analogue with the design patterns by the 'Gang of Four'. These patterns are a organised set of concepts that are distilled from the study of a wide range of commercial workflow products. JBoss jBPM's internal model is created with these workflow patterns in mind. "

That's fine !!!
But which patterns are supported ???

Here is my checklist :

Control flow pattern :

Sequence
Parralel Split
Synchronization
Exclusive choice
Simple Merge
Multi Choice
Synchronizing Merge
Multi-merge
Discriminator
N-out-of-M Join
Arbitrary cycles
Implicit Termination
Multiple instances without synchronization
Multiple instances with a Priori Design Time knowledge
Multiple instances with a Priori Run Time knowledge
Multiple instances without a Priori Run Time knowledge
Deferred Choice
Interleaved Parallel Routing
Milestone
Cancel Activity
Cancel Case

Resouce creation pattern :

Direct Allocation
Role-Based Allocation
Deferred Allocation
Authorisation
Separation of Duties
Case Handling
Retain familiar
Capablity-Based Allocation
History-Based Allocation
Organisational Allocation
Automatic Execution

Visibility patterns :

Configurable Unallocated Work Item Visibility
Configurable Allocated Work Item Visibility


It would be fine if jBPM Overview displays a matrix with patterns and jBPM compliance. (Bonita does ...)

Thanks a lot !

[kukeltje]

@anonymous

You describe the 'old' pattern set. In the jBPM source there are testcases of the patterns so you can see which are supported. It would indeed be nice if there was e.g. a wikipage (I never made the time to do this) care to help out?

Ragarding the resource patterns, there are no explicit tests, some are supported out of the box, some not but with the 'pluggable nature' of jBPM all can be supported with custom code.

[oschmitt31]

Thanks, il will check the source code.

[oschmitt31]

Not easy at all to put "yes" or "no" in my matrix !

The test classes names have no relationships with workflow patterns ...

If the jBPM team can help i will really appreciate.

[kukeltje]

hmmm.. the testclasses have the wfp number in the classname.... just make sure you use the http://www.workflowpatterns.com/documentation/documents/wfs-pat-2002.pdf version.

[kukeltje]

http://fisheye.jboss.org/browse/JBPM/jbpm.3/jpdl/jar/src/test/java/org/jbpm/jpdl/patterns

[oschmitt31]

Thanks a lot !!!!

[kukeltje]

2 months ago I made a start to see if I could implement testcases for the new patterns. I put that on hold since it was going to take to much time in relation to other work that needs to be done.