task and swimlane roles

[tom.baeyens]

heiko,

i'm splitting the user and group roles. does this look ok to you ?

public enum RoleType {

 USER,

 GROUP

}

In TaskService:

/** add a role to a given task.
 * @param roleType identifies if this is a user role or a group role
 * @param refId identifies the user or group
 * @param role specifies the role that the user or group fullfills for this task. */
void addTaskRole(long taskDbid, String refId, RoleType roleType, String role);

/** get roles related to a given task.
 * @param roleType if not null it will filter the roles
 * @param role if not null it will filter the roles */
List<UserRole> getTaskRoles(long taskDbid, RoleType roleType, String role);

/** removes a role to a given task. Nothing happens (no exception) if
 * the role does not exist.
 * @param roleType identifies if this is a user role or a group role
 * @param refId identifies the user or group
 * @param role specifies the role that the user or group fullfills for this task. */
void removeTaskRole(long taskDbid, String refId, RoleType roleType, String userRoleType);

then the same methods for associating roles with swimlanes

void addSwimlaneRole(long taskDbid, String refId, RoleType roleType, String role);
List<UserRole> getSwimlaneRoles(long taskDbid, RoleType roleType, String role);
void removeSwimlaneRole(long taskDbid, String refId, RoleType roleType, String userRoleType);

does this make sense in the context of the discussions we had about it ?

[tom.baeyens]

i'll take this rout for this iteration. let's evaluate after the release.

[heiko.braun]

Although I understand what you describe I always stumble across the word "Role". It seems to be abused in this context. "User,Group and Role" are commonly used in conjunction and have a particular meaning. Now when I read RoleType==User it get's really confusing to me.

I need to think about a different proposal, but I hope it explains why I have difficulties with the current naming.

But besides that just a few comments:

* We could simplify the API by joining RoleType and role into one entity:

RoleAssociation:
{
 type;
 role;
}

void addTaskRole(long taskDbid, String refId, RoleAssociation assoc);

* I am missing the finders, i.e. TaskService.getTaskForRole(...)

[heiko.braun]

BTW, what's the refId?

[heiko.braun]

To further explain the unification of type and role into one entity, look t the example below:

As is

TaskService.addTaskRole(73, "123-CallHome", RoleType.USER, "Heiko");

Could be

TaskService.addTaskRole(73, "123-CallHome", new UserAssociation("Heiko"));

with

class UserAssocation extends/implements RoleAssociation
{
 type = RoleType.USER;
 role;
}

[tom.baeyens]

so the 2 options are:

long taskDbid = ...;

taskService.addTaskRole(taskDbid, IdentityType.USER, "johndoe", Role.ROLENAME_CANDIDATE_USER);

or

long taskDbid = ...;

taskService.addTaskRole(taskDbid, new User("johndoe"), Role.ROLENAME_CANDIDATE_USER);

where

public interface Identity {
 getId();
}

public class User implements Identity {
 public User(String userId) {...}
 ...
}

public class Group implements Identity {
 public Group(String groupId) {...}
 ...
}

both are acceptable to me. but working with objects in a session facade can lead to confusion. so i am leaning a bit more towards first option with identityType = IdentityType.USER and identityId = "johndoe"

WDYT ?

do these 2 options reflect the choice correctly ? or do you see other diffs as well ?

[heiko.braun]

Recent chat between tom and heiko

Tom
----------------
or can that property of the stakeholder be called role ?

then we do not have the same confusion as we had before

Heiko Braun
----------------
right, we are looking fot the property of a stakeholder

that's what I call the verb

a user or group may be a stakeholder

but it doesn't specify their involvement

Tom Baeyens
----------------
what about just keeping the term role for that property ?

Heiko Braun
----------------
participant and participation is not too bad

USER johndoe PARTCIPATES as CANDIATE

i like this:

taskService.addParticipant(taskDbid, new User("johndoe"), Participation.CANDIDATE);

Tom Baeyens
----------------
yes

[heiko.braun]

Another example

TaskService.addParticipant(taskDbid, new User("3rd party"), Participation.FINAL_RECEIPIENT);

[heiko.braun]

Participation.CANDIDATE would be a pretty generic one. maybe it's enough to get started.

[camunda]

Heiko wrote:

Although I understand what you describe I always stumble across the word "Role". It seems to be abused in this context. "User,Group and Role" are commonly used in conjunction and have a particular meaning. Now when I read RoleType==User it get's really confusing to me.

Why not keeping the term "actor" which did the job well in jbpm3? And doesn't lead to the confusion Heiko described...

[tom.baeyens]

actor actually relates to what we now call an IdentityRef: a reference to a user or a group (this is now typed: UserRef and GroupRef inherit from IdentityRef)

basically the participant is a generalization of the pooled actors in jbpm 3. pooled actors were candidates. now we have other forms of participantion as well: candidate, owner, viewer, client, and so on.

[kukeltje]

I will come up with a more detailed response later, but why not
take terminology from
http://www.workflowpatterns.com/patterns/resource/resource_modelling.php

or maybe from ws-ht?

Creating our own terminology is imo not the way to go.