Is JBPM 5.2.0 production quality ?

[erikv]

We are evaluating JBPM as workflow engine for a large project. I used it before, some years ago, and advised to use it again now.

Today, after experimenting a bit with JBPM 5.2.0, my gut feeling is that it might be wiser to go for a 3.x version.

These are the reasons:

1) The demo screencasts are out of synch with the packaged software:

- in eclipse the demonstrator is using perspectives that just aren't installed in the download

- the guvnor screencast immediately goes to a view that's totally different from what I see

=> Because of these differences it's not immediately obvious (to me) what the demo is trying to show

2) There isn't any literature available yet about the software

3) It is distributed with a h2 database, which nobody will consider using for a serious project

=> No complete documentation available to migrate to mysql, see: https://community.jboss.org/thread/164547?start=0&tstart=0

4) Because of the dependencies on jboss AS 7 (totally different from jboss 5) and drools/guvnor the learning curve is much steeper then before ...

I'm very interested on the opinion of the JBPM experts on this, and looking forward to their reactions to this post ...

[salaboy21]

So before answering your questions.. my question to you is: what is a large project? how are you planning to use jBPM? which pieces of your application are you planning to use?

Its a little bit difficult to compare 3 with 5 for serveral reasons:

1) different modeling language

2) Different toolings (in 3 something like guvnor didn't exist) so  you are comparing nothing with some big project

3) The business scenarios that can be solved with 5 are much more complex that the ones that you can solve with 3

Cheers

[salaboy21]

By the way.. jBPM5 is not based on H2 or JBoss AS7, it's completely independant, that means that what you get from the installer is just a Demo setup (that's why H2, and it's not because the project is saying that H2 is production ready.. kind the opposite, just for dev and demo)

Double Cheers

[erikv]

Thanks for the swift response Mauricio,

The project deals with supporting the primary business process for a geotechnical consultancy company. The business process covers on site data acquisition (i.e. fieldwork), laboratory data aqcuisition, data processing, interpretation and integration, modelling of the sub-surface, geotechnical analysis and reporting in all these phases.

The system will allow

• sharing of geotechnical project information between project parties.
• project members (users) from different offices to collaborate on the same project.
• processing of workflows, including qa/qc, ground sample shipment and tracking, laboratory test execution, generation of planning of tasks, etc.
• back tracking of business processes, i.e. the user will be able to track which data was used in which process by whom and when to render the the data at hand.

We are still investigating for which processes to use jBPM. The logistical processes such as sending around and tracking and tracing ground samples all over the world seems to be a logical candidate.

We are also interested to learn whether we could use jBPM to support the geotechnical processes such as execution of laboratory tests. The laboratory testing processes (there are many different types of laboratory tests, i.e. many process definitions) consist of different phases (sub-processes) in which the user acquires data. In between the laboratory testing phases there is a waiting stage of several hours to a day. We think that the fact that business processes can be described declaratively is a big advantage as we have many different types of laboratory tests.

So in our current view jBPM could possibly be used throughout the whole system.

Hope this gives you enough background information.

Could you please

• give an example of a business scenario that can be solved with JBPM 5, but not with 3?
• explain which parts of the JBPM 5.2.0 installation are part of the product, and which ones are part of the demo?
• give us the status of the JBPM 5 book you are working on?
• explain how to best integrate JBPM 5.2.0 with a mysql database?

Salute

[salaboy21]

Hey Erik,

I will try to add some comments to your questions:

Could you please

• give an example of a business scenario that can be solved with JBPM 5, but not with 3?

     It's not about what can be solved or not, it the focus based on the Business Rules and Complex Event Processing. You can build simple models with reactive capabilities and simplify your old business processes using rules.

• explain which parts of the JBPM 5.2.0 installation are part of the product, and which ones are part of the demo?

As far as I know from the community perspective, what you download is a community installer. That installer contains the jBPM5 jars that are the core libraries. You can consider them as stable and usable to be embeded in your applications. Each of all the other components are being in continouos development and you need to analyze if the current status of each of them helps you or if you will need to customize them to fit your needs.

• give us the status of the JBPM 5 book you are working on?

I will write a post about it soon.. probably during the weekend. It's going well but I was extremely busy during the last couple of months finishing a project.. so now I will have time to close it up.

• explain how to best integrate JBPM 5.2.0 with a mysql database?

There is no complicated way really.. You just need to change h2 for mySQL and include the driver jar in the classpath.. it should be more complicated than that.

Cheers

[lisadesouza89]

In the default jBPM download, jbpm-5.4.0.Final-installer-full.zip, and after complete installation, everything runs smoothly with the H2 db.

I need to switch to MySQL but, there are no database scripts in the db folder at all...
I've made all noted changes in persistence.xml etc, but have no clue about the db structure...

Any help??

[vchmakov]

We use the attached script for Firebird DB.

HTH

Vladimir