Eric D. Schabell

Financial Crisis Front Line: SNS Bank is Finalists in 2009 BPM Global Awards

2009-11-04T09:38:00.009+01:00

As previously posted, my chapter in this publication was nominated for the 2009 BPM Global Awards. Surviving the Financial Crisis Front Line: SNS Bank is the story of jBPM as it continues to help the SNS Bank in these tough times.

The finalists have been announced and our jBPM solution at the SNS Bank has been selected for the European region:

Europe

Faculty of Manufacturing Technologies, TUKE, Slovakia nominated by Czestochowa University of Technology, Poland
Homeloan Management Limited (HML), UK nominated by Lombardi Software, USA
SNS Bank IT, Netherlands nominated by Red Hat, Netherlands
Swisscard AECS AG, Switzerland nominated by Action Technologies Inc., USA

This year the Awards Ceremony will be presented in a virtual format with the Gold and Silver winners announced in a special webinar on Tuesday November 24, 2009 chaired by Derek Miers, lead judge.

Awards Director Layna Fischer commented on the strength of the entries, especially those implementations with BPM and workflow extending beyond corporate boundaries to support customers, suppliers and trading partners. “We received a record number of high-quality entries in the North America region,” said Ms Fischer. “World-wide, the trend continues to increase of successful integration of multiple systems.”

Keep your fingers crossed on the 24th of November! I wonder if President Obama had anything to do with this (with thanks to Tom for image)?

JFall 2009 paper accepted: jBPM in action - past, present and future

2009-10-02T14:45:00.000+02:00

The results are in on my submission to JFall 2009:

Original:

"Gefeliciteerd! Bij deze kunnen we je berichten dat je sessie is geselecteerd voor JFall 2009. Op dit moment werken wij aan het samenstellen van het definitieve programma en het plaatsen van de content op onze website."

English:

"Congratulations! Your session submission has been accepted for JFall 2009. At this moment we are working on generating the definite program and placing the content on our website."

See you there?

jBPM paper nominated for award

2009-09-25T12:14:00.000+02:00

This summer I had a chapter published in the 2009 BPM & Workflow Handbook.

Not only has this book reached the White House, become a point of discussion with President Obama, but it has now been nominated for the Global Awards for Excellence in BPM & Workflow 2009.

Fingers crossed!

JFall 2009 : jBPM in action - past, present and future

2009-09-23T17:04:00.006+02:00

Having presented last year, I could not pass when the call for papers was made and I have submitted the following paper to JFall 2009:

Abstract
This session will take the visitor through the current status of jBPM in the field. It will make use of a real world use case to demonstrate the usage as seen over numerous jBPM projects. We will walk you through some of the issues with jBPM v3 that have led to some very interesting applications of the jBPM and finish this section up with a look at how best intentions have led to some possible best practices. We move on then to the future of jBPM and dig into the newest member of the jBPM family, v4. A serious development effort went into simplifying the API and we will provide an overview of these changes. The console was completely overhauled, a new process designer was created for inclusion into your eclipse IDE and last but not least we have a web based BPMN editor. A look at the development team and future project roadmap will be presented. Finally we wrap this session up with a look at migrations from the various versions of jBPM that we have been using in the near and distant past. Several scenarios are examined with some hints and tips provided to help you with your own migration planning.

Does this sound like something you would like to hear?

jBPM v4.1 on JBoss 5.0.0.GA - a look at the Signavio web process designer

2009-09-02T21:52:00.003+02:00

Today at the opening of JBoss World 2009 the hard working jBPM team announced a new release of jBPM v4.1. I have previously taken a look at pre-released versions of the 4.x, but wanted to dive in again as they have added a web jPDL editor in conjunction with Signavio.

First again, examine the ant build after unzipping the downloaded tarball shows many new features are now available to setup this new jBPM. You can find the complete list of new features and fixes in the jBPM Jira, but note the Tomcat integration.

# Lets look at the build.xml options.
#
$ ant -p
Buildfile: build.xml
     [echo] database......... hsqldb
     [echo] tx............... standalone
     [echo] mail.smtp.host... localhost
     [echo] current dir = /home/mine/java/jbpm-4.1

Main targets:

 clean.cfg.dir                 Deletes the ${cfg.dest.dir}
 create.cfg                    Creates a configuration in ${cfg.dest.dir}
 create.jbpm.schema            creates the jbpm tables in the database
 create.user.webapp            Generates a configuration in dir generated/cfg
 delete.jboss                  Deletes jboss installation
 delete.tomcat                 Deletes tomcat installation
 demo.setup.jboss              installs jboss, installs jbpm into jboss, starts
                               jboss, creates the jBPM DB schema, deploys examples,
                               loads example identities, installs and starts 
                               eclipse
 demo.setup.tomcat             installs tomcat, installs jbpm into tomcat, starts 
                               tomcat, creates the jBPM DB schema, deploys 
                               examples, loads example identities, installs and 
                               starts eclipse
 demo.teardown.jboss           drops the jbpm db schema and stops jboss
 demo.teardown.tomcat          stops tomcat and then the hsqldb server if needed
 drop.jbpm.schema              drops the jbpm tables from the database
 get.eclipse                   downloads eclipse to ${eclipse.distro.dir}
 get.jboss                     Downloads jboss into ${jboss.distro.dir}
 get.tomcat                    Downloads tomcat into ${tomcat.distro.dir} if it 
                               is not available
 hsqldb.databasemanager        start the hsqldb database manager
 install.eclipse               unzips eclipse, downloads eclipse if it is not 
                               available in ${eclipse.distro.dir}
 install.examples.into.tomcat  deploys all the example processes
 install.jboss                 Downloads jboss to ${jboss.distro.dir} if its 
                               not available and then unzips jboss
 install.jbpm.into.jboss       Installs jBPM into JBoss
 install.jbpm.into.tomcat      Installs jBPM into tomcat
 install.tomcat                Downloads tomcat to ${tomcat.distro.dir} if its 
                               not available and then unzips tomcat
 load.example.identities       loads the example users and groups into the database
 reinstall.jboss               Deletes the previous jboss installation and re-installs
                               jboss
 reinstall.jboss.and.jbpm      Deletes the previous jboss installation and re-installs
                               jboss and installs jbpm in it
 reinstall.tomcat              Deletes the previous tomcat installation and re-installs
                               tomcat
 reinstall.tomcat.and.jbpm     Deletes the previous tomcat installation and re-installs 
                               tomcat and installs jbpm in it
 start.eclipse                 starts eclipse
 start.jboss                   starts jboss and waits till jboss is booted, then lets 
                               jboss run in the background
 start.tomcat                  Starts Tomcat and waits till it is booted, then lets 
                               Tomcat run in the background
 stop.jboss                    signals jboss to stop, but doesn't wait till its finished
 stop.tomcat                   Signals Tomcat to stop, but doesn't wait till its finished

The install is pretty straight forward, just need time to allow JBoss v5.0.0.GA and eclipse to download. Other than that, it was a breeze.

# Get some coffee or beer while waiting for this to finish!
#
$ ant demo.setup.jboss

Once this all completes you have an eclipse started and jboss server running in the background. Use the provided user documentation to complete the installation of eclipse (add GPDL plugins and jBPM runtimes). Then you import the examples and start touring!

I was interested in the new web designer so moved over to the web console.
Following the user documentation I log in and it is still looking just as good as the pre-releases, but now with some more features (see Jira).

Now we want to see what this new web editor from Signavio is all about.

# Need to point to the signavio-repo provided in the jBPM installation.
#
$ ant -Dsignavio.repo.path=/home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/signavio-repo 

install.signavio.into.jboss
Buildfile: build.xml
     [echo] database......... hsqldb
     [echo] tx............... standalone
     [echo] mail.smtp.host... localhost
     [echo] current dir = /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1

internal.set.signavio.repo.dir:
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/signavio-repo
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/signavio-unzip-tmp
    [unzip] Expanding: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/src/signavio/jbpmeditor.war 
            into /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/signavio-unzip-tmp
      [zip] Building zip: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/
                          signavio-unzip-tmp/jbpmeditor.war
     [copy] Copying 1 file to /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/src/signavio
   [delete] Deleting directory /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/
                               signavio-unzip-tmp

install.signavio.into.jboss:
    [unzip] Expanding: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/src/signavio/jbpmeditor.war 
            into /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/jboss-5.0.0.GA/server/default/
                 deploy/jbpmeditor.war

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 17 seconds

# And now we can load up the page in our browser.
#
http://localhost:8080/jbpmeditor/p/explorer

I opened a new jPDL project, drew a few things to make a simple empty process, and saved this to a file. Very nice stuff and BPMN 1.2 (with 2.0 on the horizon) too!

One small note, you will need to run this all with Java 1.6. I started with a Java 1.5 environment and that gave all kinds of problems with the web editor which was built with Java 1.6.

jBPM in Rome

2009-08-26T23:46:00.052+02:00

Today we finished up the JBoss jBPM training course which took place in Rome, Italy. I was asked to fly in and teach this for some of the local enthusiasts here.

There is much to see in Rome, but what posting would be complete without at least a picture of the Colosseum. I don't want to make you too jealous, but I spent almost every evening eating dinner (spaghetti and clams, see picture) with this as a backdrop. My hotel was 10 minutes walking distance from the Colosseum!

The course covers jBPM v3.x in great detail, and as their was enough interest in the newer version I was able to impart some information regarding the direction jBPM v4.x has taken. It was a very beautiful old Rome apartment that functions as the Red Hat offices here. This is where the course was held, with a very nice balcony to take our breaks on (see picture). The course was over three days and contains the following topics with extensive technical labs for the students to complete:

Day1

Introduction to jBPM
Process modelling
jPDL designer
Deployment

Day2

Client programming
Context variables & expressions
Advanced process modelling
Task management

Day3

Web console
Persistence
Integration & customization

The students included a business consultant and developers, so the mix was rather interesting. You can see that we even have jBPM chicks out there in the world!

If you are contemplating a project with jBPM in the mix, I would strongly recommend that you look into Red Hat training as this course provides a very good foundation. Upon completion you could even become the proud owner of the certificate stating your jBPM expertise!

Letter to President Obama about jBPM

2009-08-11T09:13:00.003+02:00

Some of you might remember that I was published with Financial Crisis Front Line: SNS Bank in June of this year in 2009 BPM & Workflow Handbook, which was released at a W3C conference in Washington, DC.

As the focus of this book was BPM in government, the publisher has sent a copy to the President of the United States with a personal cover letter.

My chapter details a financial institution using jBPM. Will jBPM get his attention you think?

Creating a jBPM process repository for unit testing with par files

2009-07-13T16:00:00.005+02:00

My latest project involves general infrastructure improvements based on my experiences with jBPM. There have been many discussions about different aspects involving a generic process structure to enable the launching of new products in a more efficient, timely, and cost effective manner.

One of the more interesting elements in the general planning is to provide the development organization with a process repository. It will enable developers to leverage the existing Maven infrastructure to provide projects with exiting Process Archives, better known to jBPM developers as PAR files.

These files are similar to JAR files and contain the process definition along with any supporting Java classes needed to run. The interesting part is that you want to define simple process components (granularity is important) so that they can be leveraged through reuse. The idea then being that a new project can simply shop for existing process components and then import these exiting PAR files into a project where they plug into the project in process-state nodes (these being the jBPM sub-flows).

This requires that a simple process is the initial building block and needs to be setup with proper unit testing. For example, a simple process (which is left empty for posting purposes) that is used to transform input into some XML format via a single web service call. This call takes place in a state node, so you can see the process definition of the SuperProcess which calls the self contained SubProcess by fishing it out of the PAR repository included in the projects dependencies.

Here the SuperProcess definition:

<process-definition name="superprocess">

  <start-state name="start">
     <transition to="XML transform" name="to_process_state" />
  </start-state>

  <process-state name="XML transform">
    <sub-process name="xmltransform">
    <transition to="end" name="to_end" />
  </process-state>

  <end-state name="end" />

</process-definition>

The SubProcess definition:

<process-definition name="xmltransform">

  <start-state name="start">
    <transition to="end" name="to_end" />
  </start-state>

  <end-state name="end" />

</process-definition>

The unit test for the SubProcess (trivial in this example):

@Test
public void testXmltransformProcess() throws Exception {

  // Extract a process definition from the processdefinition.xml file.
  ProcessDefinition superProcessDefinition = 
    ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("xmltransform/processdefinition.xml");

  // Test it.
  assertNotNull("Definition should not be null", superProcessDefinition);

  // Setup superprocesses.
  ProcessInstance superProcessInstance = new ProcessInstance(superProcessDefinition);

  assertEquals(
    "Instance is in start state", 
    superProcessInstance.getRootToken().getNode().getName(), "start");

  // Move the process instance out of start state.
  superProcessInstance.signal();
  
  assertEquals(
    "Instance is in end state", 
    superProcessInstance.getRootToken().getNode().getName(), 
    "end");

  assertTrue("Instance has ended", superProcessInstance.hasEnded());

}

Now the unit test for the SuperProcess:

@Test
public void testSuperProcess() throws Exception {

  // Extract a process definition from the par file.
  ProcessDefinition subProcessDefinition = 
    ProcessDefinition.parseParResource("xmltransform.par");

  ProcessDefinition superProcessDefinition = 
    ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("superprocess/processdefinition.xml");

  // Test it.
  assertNotNull("Definition should not be null", subProcessDefinition);
  assertNotNull("Definition should not be null", superProcessDefinition);

  // Setup super and subprocesses.
  ProcessState processState = (ProcessState) superProcessDefinition.getNode("XML transform");
  processState.setSubProcessDefinition(subProcessDefinition);
        
  ProcessInstance superProcessInstance = new ProcessInstance(superProcessDefinition);
  ProcessInstance subProcessInstance   = new ProcessInstance(subProcessDefinition);
   
  // Get our process tokens.
  Token superToken = superProcessInstance.getRootToken();
  Token subToken   = subProcessInstance.getRootToken();

  assertEquals(
    "Instance is in start state",
    superProcessDefinition.getStartState(), 
    superToken.getNode());

  // Move the process instance from its start state to the first state.
  superToken.signal();

  // Subprocess in start?
  assertEquals(
    "SubProcess instance is in start state", 
    subProcessDefinition.getNode("start"), 
    subToken.getNode());
  
  // Move subprocess out of start.
  subToken.signal();
  
  // Subprocess ended?
  assertEquals(
    "SubProcess instance is in end state", 
    subProcessDefinition.getNode("end"), 
    subToken.getNode()); 
  assertTrue("SubProcess instance has ended", subProcessInstance.hasEnded());

  // Superprocess ended?
  assertEquals(
    "SuperProcess instance is in end state", 
    superProcessDefinition.getNode("end"), 
    superToken.getNode()); 
    assertTrue("SuperProcess instance has ended", superProcessInstance.hasEnded());

Of course these are really simple examples. We are looking into unit testing much more complex processes that include task-nodes, state-nodes, and processes with several layers (deep) of process-states. Anyone have experiences with these kinds of unit tests?

Note: these are jBPM v3.x processes.

Help push the open sourcing of a jBPM Migration Tool

2009-07-03T12:48:00.002+02:00

Just back from vacation and saw this go by on the mailinglists of the jBPM project. A possible solution that many of us have encountered for migration of existing process definitions (running processes) over to a new version of the process definition. Check out the overview at Caleb Powell's blog.

It appears that this might be getting pushed into the jBPM project as an apart tool for the 3.x versions, so drop over to the blog and post your support for them to contribute this tooling. Really great stuff!

===================== UPDATE ======================
This looks like it will happen, see the jBPM forum thread.

CAiSE / PRET 2009 - looking back in review

2009-06-14T20:50:00.002+02:00

Last week I spent the day at CAiSE / PRET as my chapter was included in the proceedings. It was a rather interesting day spent listening and discussing topics related to research being pushed over the line into practice. My favorite topic!

The PRET (industrial papers) section of the conference was opened by W. van der Aalst with a nicely integrated look at process mining. He tied it up in a story line based on TomTom, so with process mining they expect to provide navigation like functionality to your business by mining the various data sources. This is done with a tool called ProM.

Lots of pretty stuff can be done with this tooling. I really loved the live simulations of processes running through a generated process flow that the tool came up with after mining some data source. To be truthful, I was left with the feeling that even though the ideas and such are interesting it misses the connection to reality. My biggest problems were that you can only cut some costs in a project by generating the process flow (i.e. less hours spent on modeling by the IA/BI gals). What about the rest of the project players? It does nothing to speed up my work as a team lead developing these processess. The use cases are not generated... what about integration to the various business data sources, this was left blank in the presentation.

Finally we were put through a long story about nothing from a Cordys executive. Must have been a reason, but I only got the message that Cordys can solve all your problems, but no details included.

When the break came about it was time for viewing our posters, which is always fun to watch. I put these things together and am always curious to the reactions or even if anyone will stop to ponder my work. Luckily I did not waste my time creating this poster as it was well pondered!

After the break it was time for a new concept, a sort of mini overview of the papers grouped in my session, followed by an audience discussion with author participation coming from within the ranks of the audience. My paper was well received and I even had some nice reactions from the Session Chair (he liked my use of "Happy Flow" so much, it is a standard in his vocabulary now).

It was nice to have a chance to mix it up with people from not only the practical side of the business, but researchers and manager level minds as well. It was a rather lively discussion and I was rather impressed with this type of session. Often simple conference presentations can be incredibly bad, to downright awful if the presenter is having some English troubles.

The afternoon session was more in Enterprise Architecture and not really my area of interest. Soon after this we were all headed into the city of Amsterdam for some dinner and social talks over beer. I walked past some of my old hangouts from my university days and was devastated to find my regular bar twisted into some sort of hip lounge place now called 'Mini Bar'. I must be getting really old... ;-)

Dutch JBoss Event 2009

2009-05-28T14:33:00.001+02:00

Yesterday in Utrecht at the nice seminar location Aristo was the first Dutch JBoss Event 2009. It was to be a day of presentations from 4 different implementers and/or customers using JBoss for their solutions.

I was expecting a lot of high level stories without a lot of technology depth, but it was really amazing. The 4 stories were delivered with enough detail to entertain the higher level architects and managers, but also to interest the more technologically inclined. The question sessions at the end of these stories reflected this, as they ranged from questions about specific component versions up to project/management process questions.

The agenda for the day looked like this:

10:00 Welcome by Mohamed Yassini (RedHat)
10:15 Ciber with NXP - “The new way of custom development”
11:30 Sogeti on NS-HiSpeed project
12:30 Lunch
13:15 Xebia on “Migration to JBoss Made Cost Effective and Easy”
14:30 De Nationale Postcodeloterij on “Managed Services in Practice”
15:30 Closing

Welcome by Mohamed Yassini
Mohamed opened up the day with a nice introduction which included presenting Carlos de Wolf (JBoss EJB3 Lead Developer) and myself to the audience.

Philips development restructured
The first presentation described an extensive project to bring some structure to the Phillips development organization.

Herwig Wens, an Enterprise Architect from NXP walked us through the starting situation, with 400+ applications, a myriad of tools, no best practices, no cohesion, you get the idea... They brought guidance and designed the Custom Development Reference Architecture (CDRA) as a basis for the future. A leading remark was that Philips would "Reuse, before Buy, before Build." I like this kind of thinking.

As NXP does not implement architectures, they partnered with Ciber. At this point Cyber took over and presented the rest of the project implementation which was done with Prince2, RUP, UML and in a POC:

standardized on Oracle and MySql.
application server is Tomcat and JBoss
OS is Red Hat Linux
security by LDAP
architectural points of interest were integration between GUI and business logic with SEAM and jBPM were instrumental

This presentation finished with lessons learned. The big one that stuck with me was that when they started this JBoss project it was pre-Red Hat. This means that all components were pulled from the community site and many integration problems / bugs were solved to get this working. This is not a path to take with Red Hat providing JBoss.com integrated solutions taking the pain out of your projects.

Sogeti and Hispeed NS

The project presented here was related to a smaller portion of the project running to keep the Hispeed NS portal up and running. It was about creating a generic OTAP environment with JBoss components.

Starting in 2008 the various portions of the existing IT landscape within were being re-structured to provide proper support for the development effort. This story applied JBoss tools to implement a manageable migration for projects through Development (O), Testing (T), Acceptance (A), and Production (P) systems.

The architecture included the following componentes:

JBoss EAP
SEAM
Hibernate
Maven
JBoss AS
Postgres
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

The only thing missing in the entire solution was continuous integration, but even so, less than 1 hour between full project deployments from one phase to the next is a very exciting result!

Xebia on migration to JBoss
A talk on how to manage your migration project from IBM WS / BEA to JBoss. This was a very keen overview that not only took into accout the obvious Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) aspects, but the more interesting points that need to be kept in mind:

project planning and tracking (Agile Migration Method)
quality and performance, same or better afterwards?
hidden surprises, with each project being unique
skill migration evaluation
strategies, big bang vs. incremental migration
migration or (partial) rewrite of application(s)
TCO calculator

A very sound and decent partner to involve if you are thinking about migration projects anytime soon.

Profict on mission critical systems with JBoss
Final talk of the day was very captivating, with an inside look at how the Dutch national lottery is managed on the IT front. Some amazing facts about the amount of money moving through this managed infrastructure is amazing:

National lottery : over 2.75 billion in 19 years has been processed to over 57 different charities
Bank giro lottery : over 352 million to 45 good causes processed
Sponsor bingo lottery : over 390 million processed for clubs and sports

They have to collect over 60 million per month through the banking and billing systems of the Netherlands, reaching 50% of all Dutch citizens who participate. An example was given that if the systems would be down for a day, that they had exstimated the damage to relate to 1% downgrade in collection results (remember, they collect over 60 million, so that is some serious damage)!

In the last 4 years they have seen their collections via the internet channels grow to 70% of the total selling channels. This is why they have chosen to migrate their entire IT infrastructure to JBoss EAP and jBPM, phasing out all propriatary solutions. There has not been a single day of down time (they reported) since JBoss has been put into production.

Amazing to me that a company that has such a cash flow ends up on the best product, which is used to being measured on TCO numbers. Here price could be no object if some component was needed to ensure these channels continue to process at maximum efficiency.

In closing, this event was well received and many of the attendees stated (during the drink and dinner afterwards) that they looked forward to participating in the next one!

Also a special thanks to Petra Ras from Copaco for the organizational aspects, she pulled off a great seminar!

jBPM 4 beta 2 on JBoss 5.0.0.GA screenshots

2009-05-14T14:36:00.041+02:00

Another beta release cycle for jBPM v4 and I wanted to see what has been updated in the gwt-console so off we go again to take another look since the beta 1 release.

This time I chose the default JBoss 5.0.0.GA instead of the latest GA just to avoid having to change the provided ant script defaults:

jboss.version : Default value is 5.0.0.GA. Alternative value is 5.0.1.GA

The environment is as follows by default (starting from where ever you decide to unpack the jbpm v4 beta 2 zip file:

[echo] database.................... hsqldb
[echo] jbpm.home................... ../../jbpm-4.0.0.Beta2
[echo] jboss.version............... 5.0.0.GA
[echo] jboss.filename.............. jboss-5.0.0.GA.zip
[echo] jboss.distro.path........... ../../jbpm-4.0.0.Beta2/downloads/jboss-5.0.0.GA.zip
[echo] jboss.home.................. ../../jbpm-4.0.0.Beta2/jboss-5.0.0.GA
[echo] jboss.server.configuration.. default
[echo] jboss.server.config.dir..... ../../jbpm-4.0.0.Beta2/jboss-5.0.0.GA/server/default

Getting started I wanted to examine the ant possibilities.

$ ant -p

Main targets:

delete.jboss.installation  deletes jboss installation
demo.setup                 installs jboss, installs jbpm into jboss, starts
                           jboss, creates the jBPM DB schema, deploys examples,
                           loads example identities, installs and starts eclipse
demo.teardown              drops the jbpm db schema and stops jboss
get.jboss                  downloads jboss into ${jboss.distro.dir}
install.jboss              unzips jboss, downloads jboss to ${jboss.distro.dir} if its not available
install.jbpm.into.jboss    installs jbpm into jboss
reinstall.jboss            deletes the previous jboss installation and re-installs jboss
start.jboss                starts jboss and waits till jboss is booted, then lets jboss
                           run in the bg
stop.jboss                 signals jboss to stop, but doesn't wait till its finished

# As I don't want to download and/or install another eclipse, I will avoid the demo.setup.
# The nice part is that this is all installed relative to your jbpm path by default, giving
# you a self contained playground. See the jboss/build.xml for exact details.
#
$ ant get.jboss

$ ant install.jboss

$ ant install.jbpm.into.jboss

At this point I jumped over to my eclipse to setup the jBoss server and started it there. Now it is time to add the provided GPDL designer, jBPM user library, adding jPDL schema to XML catalog, imported examples into eclipse, and finally added ant deployment capabilities. Just follow the provided documentation that starts in the jbpm 4 beta 2 root directory, a file called readme.html.

Some of the examples were missing libraries (some JBoss esb stuff), but you can take a look at the screenshots to get an idea of what this all looks like.

Please note that process deployment is done with an Ant build script, as provided in the examples. You will not find this in the current gwt-console as you used to see in the jBPM v3.x consoles. Just follow the user documentation as provided!

jBPM community day report

2009-05-09T20:20:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I was at the jBPM Community Day in Antwerp, Belgium and I wanted to give you a bit of an impression of what went down there.

It all started with a kickoff presentation by Tom Baeyens, Founder and Lead of JBoss jBPM with an overview of what jBPM is. This was a rather global look at the simple theory behind the process engine and a bit of an overview of what jBPM v4 is. This led to some interesting discussions as the public interacted and fired off questions. The audience was a mix of 50/50 of developers and non-BPM users which made for a nice mix of strategic and technical discussions.

The second presentation was started by me, just to explain what I had been doing at the SNS Bank, what the background was on the story, and that as I am now a Red Hat employee it would be better if Maurice de Chateau (the current SNS Bank jBPM Team Lead) gave the details. Maurice gave a complete overview of the last 2 years of jBPM implementation experience that we had built up, with some do's, some gotcha's, and some architectural details. This finished up with quite a few questions and discussions that dripped over into the follow up break for coffee. Nice to chat with the various community members from the jBPM world!

The final presentation was given by Joram Barrez
that was a demo of a pretty neat Bluetooth activated jBPM v4 (based on the beta 1 release) application. He was a very funny and knowledgeable speaker that captivated the audience.

After this we headed off for either home (those that were done with the day) or to a dinner organized by the jBPM team. It was full of development talks, good food, and of course the famous Belgian beer.

I was able to chat with Tom a bit and I am looking forward to the next community event!

In transition to JBoss Solutions Architect

2009-04-28T14:22:00.000+02:00

Well, the last day of work at SNS Bank is behind me. As you can see, it was a REAL tough day! ;-)

It is rather weird to be leaving after only 21 months, but the whole group there has been really great. I want to thank them all one last time (you know who you are) for the great time and sendoff.

I am going to have to see what I am able to continue to post here about jBPM. I hope in my new roll to continue to provide insights into actual solutions in the field. I imagine my travels and interactions with customers will provide some interesting topics to write about here. Maybe I will have to broaden the subject matter or provide new feeds that cover different aspects of the JBoss product line.

In either case, I am hitting the ground running with a trip to RedHat HQ and planning out my role with my new boss. I also hope to see you all in Antwerpen on 8 May for the jBPM Community Day, but should you miss that I will try to fill you in with a post here.

jBPM from the trenches - a state-proxy solution final report

2009-04-16T19:00:00.007+02:00

As previously posted, we have been working on something we call a state-proxy.Now that it has been realized I can provide some more details.

The problem was that we had no ESB solution in our SOA infrastructure and all processes in jBPM are modeled using nodes, decisions, process-states, and tasks. We wanted to make use of state nodes to provide at least the ability to enter real wait states and persist the process data. This was to give us more reliability and constancy in our process implementations.

In each state node a single service call is made through the infrastructure provided by a state-proxy. This state-proxy infrastructure is used to create a new thread of execution and release the process to enter a wait state. The state-proxy will then handle the service call, serialize the results or exceptions, place them in the context, and signal back to the waiting process.

The process flow shown here (top left) depicts the integration test that was run using our state-proxy infrastructure and state nodes. The process definition for these state nodes looks something like this:

<state name="someServiceCall">
<event type="node-enter">
<action class="some.domain.handler.SomeServiceCallHandler" />
</event>
<event type="node-leave">
<action class="some.domain.handler.SomeServiceCallHandler" />
</event>
<transition to="anotherServiceCall?" />
</state>

Each state node makes use of a handler that contains three methods:

/**
 * Where the service proxy is created, the input object for the service call
 * is filled, and the service call is made.
 *
 * This method is run on the event 'on node-enter'. 
 */
public void onPerformCall(ExecutionContext exc) {}

/**
* When the state-proxy call has completed, it will signal back to the process
* which reacts to the event 'on node-leave'. The state-proxy has set a context
* variable RESULT_DATA which is used to transport the JBoss serialized results
* and is placed into the input 'result' object. This method allows processing
* of the service results before taking the default transition to exit the state
* node.
*
* This method is run on the event 'on node-leave'.
*/
public void onHandleResults(ExecutionContext exc, Object result) {)

/**
* When the state-proxy call has completed, it will signal back to the process
* which reacts to the event 'on node-leave'. The state-proxy has set a context
* variable RESULT_ERROR which is used to transport the JBoss serialized exception
* and is placed into the exception 'e' object. This method allows processing
* of the exception before taking the default transition to exit the state
* node.
*
* This method is run on the event 'on node-leave'.
*/
public void onHandleException(ExecutionContext exc, Exception e) {}

I am unable to provide exact details from the code of the state-proxy, but I can say that this enables us to detach our service calls from the calling process node, persist our state, and await the results. These results can then be handled or the resulting error can be processed before continuing with the flow.

Some issues remain.

It is not possible to exit a state node via a transition that you may choose from the 'on node-leave' event (either from our onHandleResults or onHandleException). The signal being sent back from the state-proxy has already retrieved the process context and instance and filled the node with the default transition. We are looking into this and you can see the current way of working is to place a decision node directly after the state to branch as needed.

Another rather simple problem, is that a failing signal from the state-proxy back to the process is a single point of failure that could lead to a process 'waiting' forever. We need to build in a mechanism, such as email to a process administrator, to ensure that processes do not fall asleep at the end of an 'on node-enter' event.

I hope this brings some of the promised details to light on what we are doing with a state-proxy to ensure some sort of process reliability and data consistency without the use of an ESB.

jBPM 4 beta 1 on JBoss 5.0.1.GA screenshots

2009-04-09T22:15:00.001+02:00

I was pretty curious when I saw the announcement on the jBPM feed that the new release was available.

I setup the newest JBoss and jBPM 4 on my macbook. Just downloaded the app server and unzipped and ran the installer to get jBPM auto installed.

Fired up the Jboss app server, loaded the web console in my browser, logged into the new gwt console for jBPM and took some screenshots.

Nothing extensive such as process deployment, swimlanes, or task management to show you, but nice to see how easy this install has become.

Kudo's to the jBPM team!

Speaking at jBPM community day

2009-04-09T20:14:00.000+02:00

The jBPM team is holding a Community Day in Antwerp on May 8th, 2009 and I have been invited to speak.

The initial invitation was to present my SNS Bank work entitled Full Scale STP with jBPM. It will cover some of the material I have published (PRET09 / 2009 BPM Handbook) and presented previously. I am really looking forward to meeting with the developers themselves and to meet some of the community.

The only funny part of this story is that since I was invited, I have signed on with RedHat. I starting on the 1st of May. So officially I will no longer work for SNS Bank (for 8 days!) which makes the presentation a bit strange. Luckily the material is fresh for me and I plan to update it with the current status of our extensive jBPM usage.

I will be there with my good friend and then to be jBPM lead for SNS Bank, deMaurice. Stop on by and say hi, we look forward to meeting you and hearing your jBPM stories!

2009 BPM & Workflow Handbook - Financial Crisis Front Line: SNS Bank

2009-04-06T10:47:00.000+02:00

A few months ago my chapter was accepted for evaluation and printing in the 2009 BPM and Workflow Handbook.

Today I gave official permission to publish the chapter, which will appear in section 2 which is entitled "The business value of workflow and BPM." The cover of the book is shown here and is linked to the order page. A table of contents with full abstract is available here.

The book will be launched in June 2009 at the BPM in Government Conference and Expo in Washington DC in conjunction with the Spring WfMC member meeting. I have been invited to come to this conference and also to an author signing at the books launch.

JBoss Serialization simple example

2009-03-30T20:47:00.010+02:00

I know this is a rather trivial thing, but serializing non-serializable objects is not very well documented online (as far as I could see), so thought I would post an example using the well known solution JBoss Serialization.

What I am doing is trying to add jBPM context variables that are serialized for transport (SOAP), so here a non-serializable web service result object will be serialized.

// Using Jboss to serialize a non-serialziable web service result object.
//
Map<String, Object> contextData = new HashMap<String, Object>();
JBossObjectOutputStream objOut = null;
byte[] serializedResult = null;

try {
    ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream() ;

    objOut = new JBossObjectOutputStream(out);
    objOut.writeObject(result);
    objOut.close();
    out.close();

    // jboss serialized object into byte array.
    serializedResult = out.toByteArray();
} catch (IOException ioEx) { 
    LOG.error("Unable to serialize the service results object: " 
        + ioEx.getMessage());
} 

// insert into context.
context.put(RESULT_DATA, serializedResult);

// using previously created process instance we can now add this to 
// our jbpm context via a given token.
token.processInstance.getContextInstance().addVariables(context, token);

To un-serialize you just reverse the order above using a ByteArrayInputStream and JBossObjectInputStream.

================ UPDATE =====================

I have cleaned up the above action and provide a reusable utility method to serialize and un-serialize an object to/from a byte array.

/**
 * Converts an object to a serialized byte array.
 * 
 * @param obj Object to be converted.
 * @return byte[] Serialized array representing the object.
 */
public static byte[] getByteArrayFromObject(Object obj) {
    byte[] result = null;
       
    try {
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        ObjectOutputStream oos = new JBossObjectOutputStream(baos);
        oos.writeObject(obj);
        oos.flush();
        oos.close();
        baos.close();
        result = baos.toByteArray();
    } catch (IOException ioEx) {
        Logger.getLogger("UtilityMethods").error("Error converting object to byteArray", ioEx);
    }
        
    return result;
}

/**
 * Utility method to un-serialize objects from byte arrays.
 * 
 * @param bytes The input byte array.
 * @return The output object.
 */
public static Object getObjectFromByteArray(byte[] bytes) {
    Object result = null;
 
    try {
        ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(bytes);
 ObjectInputStream ois = new JBossObjectInputStream(bais);
 result = ois.readObject();
 ois.close();
    } catch (IOException ioEx) {
        Logger.getLogger("UtilityMethods").error("Unable to deserialize object from byte array.", 
            ioEx);
    } catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfEx) {
        Logger.getLogger("UtilityMethods").error("No corresponding class for byte array.", 
            cnfEx);
    }
  
    return result;
}

Have you ever had an old school design session?

2009-03-13T13:49:00.002+01:00

I thought some of you out there might appreciate this picture. While looking at a rather complex problem that required a process design, I was presented with this very old school work breakdown structure as the Information Analyst saw it (on the right in the picture, with all them yellow sticky notes just waiting to fall off).

It took most of the day in a sort of workshop session to pull the not yet written use cases out of the Information Analysts and many "oh yeah, I forgot to mention..." It resulted in the process design you see here which is then used to roughly estimate the number of man hours needed to implement it. With all the available technology, we are using sticky notes for placeholders, notes in a workbook, and nothing even remotely created in this century... luckily I had my mobile phone camera to be able to capture the work done in this session.

Is it just me? Have you ever had days like this on your jBPM projects?

Job change - off to join RedHat

2009-03-06T13:39:00.004+01:00

I have been rather quiet on posting as I was struggling with a very big decision over the last 5 weeks. I have decided to accept an offer made to me by RedHat and become their JBoss Solutions Architect BeNeLuX.

It was an offer that I could not refuse, with both technical depth and the elements of Free Open Source Software (FOSS). This challenge lies close to my heart and I am very excited to get started having just signed the contract papers today. I hope to make use of my experiences with both JBoss and jBPM in the field to fulfill my new tasks. I will be starting on May 1st, 2009.

I will be leaving behind a job at SNS IT that I really enjoyed and an employer I would rate as the best I have had up to now. They gave me the freedom to be both technical and creative, a combination not often achievable within IT organizations. For this I will always be grateful and would like to thank all of you (you know who you are) that made each day fun and full of laughs!

2009 JavaOne Conference Proposal Notification

2009-02-27T08:17:00.000+01:00

The JavaOne 2009 conference put out a call for papers and I submitted this session abstract. Today the reject for this came, pretty much what could be expected as the chance for an accept was pretty small. I wanted to post this for posterity:

27 Feb 2009
Dear Eric D. ,

Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the 2009 JavaOne(sm) Conference Content Team are grateful for your proposal to present at the Conference. The overall number of submissions exceeded the conference session capacity by over 400%! The volume of high quality submissions made the selection process extremely difficult. As a result, we regret to inform you that we will be unable to accept your proposal entitled ' Java defeating the Financial Crisis - a tale from the front-line '.

With over 1300 proposals submitted, we regret that we cannot provide information about why a specific session was declined, However, in the spirit of helping people better understand how the selection process works, we have created the following blog, which includes comments by members of the content selection committee:

http://planets.sun.com/JavaOne/group/submitters/

Again, thank you very much for your submission. We appreciate your continued support of the JavaOne conference.

Sincerely,
JavaOne Conference Content Team

CAiSE09 PRET chapter submitted

2009-02-21T09:33:00.000+01:00

Finished the final chapter and submitted today.

For background see my previous postings on the process.

You can find the latest copy of the paper here.

2009 Bpm and Workflow Handbook chapter submitted

2009-02-20T18:09:00.000+01:00

Some time ago I submitted an abstract that was accepted for the 2009 BPM and Workflow Handbook.

Submitted my chapter today. You can find a copy over here.

Final results on CAiSE09 chapter submission

2009-02-08T09:00:00.005+01:00

This weekend I go the final results back on my chapter submission. It will be part of the book brought out in the PRET conference!

For background see my previous postings on the process.

"We are happy to inform you that your chapter has been selected for inclusion in the PRET proceedings.

As mentioned in the invitation for the submission of your full chapter, we were planning on accepting 10 to 12 chapters from the 15 that were invited. Your chapter is among the ones we selected for inclusion in the proceedings."

There is some rework to be done for the camera-ready version, so one more for the revision TODO list that has a deadline for the end of February.