[jbpm-dev] Proposal for jBPM5 first release

[Staub, Edward]

Kris,

Unless you've been getting a lot of private communication, the paucity of feedback here must be troubling.

I've been involved with workflow since around 1990, and it has always been plagued with too many competing products and specifications.  Just within the organization, JBoss suffers from this greatly, with three products competing for mindshare.  (I know, each has a sweet spot, but nevertheless, they share less than they should.)  If JBPM can span the needs of the various constituencies better, I think it would be a big win.  

In looking at JBPM and Drools-Flow, there are a few requirement candidates that I'm surprised there hasn't been any discussion of.  I don't mean to promote these - but I do think that it may make sense to explicitly rule them in or out - especially "out", so that people will react if it's painful not to have a particular feature.  It may well be that none of them are important to anyone who's a real stakeholder here.  I'm NOT a stakeholder, except in the sense that my company may at some point decide to use JBPM.

Apologies in advance for any misinformation here - it's unintentional!

Are these needed?
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1.) Open persistence - by which I mean, a database schema where the process and "thread" states, definitions, etc., are modeled in the database - not in a big blob.  JBPM has this, Drools-Flow doesn't.  

2.) Isolated or collaborative custom nodes.  In Drools-Flow, the WorkItem is (deliberately, I think) isolated from the engine.  It can get parameters, and return values - that's it.  In JBPM, the Activity has more-or-less full access to the engine.

3.) Custom Decision Handlers.  In JBPM, decision nodes can be customized just as much as Activity/WorkItem nodes.  In Drools-Flow, the only inputs to a decision are the KnowledgeBase variables.

4.) Use of rules for decisions.  They both have this in some form.  The JBPM support is a subset of Drools-Flow.  Is it sufficient to satisfy Drools-Flow users?  If not, what's "missing"?

5.) A roadmap for web services.  JBPM has historically done nothing in this area.  Is this still the plan?  

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I hope this is helpful.

Good luck,
-Ed Staub