Should I Use Jboss JBPM for this

[umerfar]

We are in R&D phase for a given project and we have to develop the underlying conceptual model. I am not sure whether this is appropriate section to put this question, i apologize in advance.

Scenario

There will be number of templates, each template may have number of activities and activities are assigned to a User, Role or a Group. Attachements (Questionnaires and Documents) can also be attached with any activities.

Any Client who comes for this system is handled as a Case (A new Use Case). This case will be assigned a particular template and then the process will be followed according to the activities assigned in template. This case is visible to the User, Role or a Group attached with Activities.

For example, a template may have an activity for "register user" and then "interview user" and then "request manager for approval" type of and all these activities are EDITBLE in the system by the admin i.e and admin can add "email verification" activity before "manager approval". At each activity there will be a pre-defined state of the system i.e: Started, Pending, Approved, Rejected.

I can put the conceptual diagram for the system on your request.

My first question is

Should or can we use Jboss jBPM for it? I am not able to decide it yet. Since the activities and the intercommunication between roles, activities and cases is giving me a green signal that its a workflow.

My second question is

I have read in the jboss-jpdl documentation, in section 3.4. Task assignment example

"Because of the separation between the jBPM
workflow engine and the organisational model, an expression language for calculating actors would always be too
limited"

So can't we assign task to the users or role graphically useing jpdl graphic designer and we have to write the custom code for that?? i am asking this because it is an important requirement for our applicaiton.

[kukeltje]

So can't we assign task to the users or role graphically useing jpdl graphic designer and we have to write the custom code for that??

Not sure what you mean by this

Regarding the other question: If it looks like a tomato (ah... not a ;-)), tastes like a tomato....

[umerfar]

I am sorry for my concepts as i am newbie to this Workflow development and if it does not make sense to you. poor me,

Any ways i'll try again.

According to jBPM-jpdl documentation

"jBPM only stores Strings as actorIds and doesn't know the relation between the users, groups and other identity information."

What if i want to manage these relationships for our application?

Another question:

How do we integrate the jBPM processes in our Web application? Will it be Web services or a simple jar or we have to customize the process that we deployed on the server??

[kukeltje]

What if i want to manage these relationships for our application?

The build that. use e.g. your ldap to retrieve the correct actor, pooled actor(s) or whatever and set e.g. the appropriate field in the task. You do not need to use the identiy module then.

How do we integrate the jBPM processes in our Web application? Will it be Web services or a simple jar or we have to customize the process that we deployed on the server??

- jar (api) best from java when using jbpm embedded
- commands (ejb)
- webservice (very limited atm)

[umerfar]

Thanx for ur kind reply.

One more thing is that if i want to make my workflow dynamic i.e.

If i want to add a new task in running workflow or change the transitions from one node to another at runtime using command button or action handlers. is this possible???

[kukeltje]

yes, to some extend. I unformtunately have no detailed info on that, but afaik there is an example in the wiki, but I'm not sure