ok... the issues are:

1. an xml representation of the task variables
2. the meta information representation

For 1 we can make some assumtions.

a:
Each element that is a simple type at the top level is a process variable with the same name as the label in the xml representation.

b:
Elements that only contain simple types are javatypes, where the child elements should be getters/setters with tha name of the child element

c:
Elements that contain complex types are treated as collections/maps/... Collections are treated as if they contain the same type of objects. This means that an elemen in xml cannot contain both complex types and simpletypes. This does not pose a problem to me.

(personal remark: if 'documents' get this complex, they should not be stored in the process engine but in a dossier with a reference in the processengine)

And now the beauty: afaik, jxpath could help out very easily here. Not completely sure but I'll have a look.


Regarding point 2, the meta info. I would not support retrieving tasklists. Would you? Just:

- start pi
* * process name (always the latest!)
* * initial variables

- finish task
* * pi number / hash reference
* * taskinstanceid / hash reference
* * variables
* * transition
* * ....

- signal state
* * pi number / hash reference
* * tokenid / hash reference
* * variables
* * transition
* * ....

- .....

<jbpm>
 <processinstance>hashtopi<processinstance>
 <reference>tokenreference/taskinstancereference</reference>
 <variables>
 <name>Ronald</name>
 <gender>Male</gender>
 <address>
 <street>somestreet 666</street>
 <postalcode>1234 ZZ</postalcode>
 <city>anywhere</anywhere>
 </address>
 <order>
 <orderline>
 <productnumber>1</productnumber>
 <items>6</items>
 </orderline>
 <orderline>
 <productnumber>3</productnumber>
 <items>2</items>
 </orderline>
 </order>
 </variables>
 <transition>ORDER</transition>
</jbpm>

just some thoughts... lets continue thinking

I'm not keen on directly using the internal id's exposed to the outside.

I'll have look at the spring-like & mx-like stuff. Where is it specifically?

I miss the point regarding the

but i don't see yet how we can define the xml format of the jbpm objects that we return. maybe we could return the simplest form like

<process-instance id="4" />
<task-instance id="5" />


and have separate methods for fetching the content of those elements... but that will decrease performance, right.

btw, I already have a small working example. Is CVS stable again so I can check in some webapp changes?

will do this weekend. I also have added a websale2 process to have several variables that will be displayed as a date, radiobutton, listbox, textarea in a custom webapp. This webapp is also in the tree under /src/resources/customWebapp.war with a context of /websale. The build files are also adapted.