[jbpm-dev] Human Task Module API and DataStructures Proposed changes
Maciej Swiderski
mswiders at redhat.com
Wed Jun 27 17:28:26 EDT 2012
Hi Mauricio,
Do we foresee any use cases where task service will be used without
process engine? If so, I agree we could make it as generic as possible
but priority number 1 should be integration with process engine to make
it simple and intuitive.
In general I like this separation but I am not convinced about task
definition service as to me it looks bit over designed to the use cases
I am aware of. One issue I see with this is that we introduce task
definition management in human task module which I don't think should be
concerned about. It should be only runtime component and not repository
for task definition. If we think about storing task definitions that are
reusable across processes we should store them in guvnor rather than in
additional component (ht module). Since both designer and form builder
is integrated with it so no need for yet another integration. This is
more of tools responsibility and not runtime component. Especially
important in case of local task service, since how we could store/deploy
task definition into local task service?
Same applies for task delegation service, as this kind of information
could come from another place - repository and be utilized by tooling.
Configuration is week point in human task module currently so I believe
that this is very important element to be improved while refactoring (or
even redesiging) task module. I would see this as single configuration
service that allows to configure - in this new way - all services with
defaulting to convention over configuration so well documented
convention of configuration points is a must.
As it comes to integration between process engine and human task it
should be as simple as possible. I agree that in some cases use of
switch yard and camel makes sence but we should not force users to
include it every time. Simple interactions should be available and in my
opinion out of the box. For instance, make use of jms provider that AS
delivers instead of putting additional frameworks in between.
If you want to keep the services not aware of process interaction then
we should deliver facade for process interactions that hides some of the
steps and expose very simple API to interact with, like addTask,
completeTask, getTask, getAssignerTasks, etc (part of this is probably
in task instance service). That will make a smooth interaction from the
process side which as mentioned already is most important, in my opinion.
For CDI, I am not expert here but what about standalone adoptions, like
swing, or other desktop frameworks, will CDI fit into that?
Let's encourage others here to speak up as we need more votes on this
refactor.
Maciej
On 27.06.2012 20:17, Mauricio Salatino wrote:
> Thanks Maciej for the questions. I've included comments between the
> bullets
>
> "Mauricio, couple of questions at the very beginning to understand
> correctly your proposal:
>
> * Q: how does task def service applies to process interactions -
> when task definition will be deployed?
> A: I was trying to not think about the process engine for exposing
> a Human Task Interactions APIs, but I understand your question.
> Right now inside our HTWorkItems we are calling the taskClient.add
> method which in fact is doing a deploy and an instantiation of a
> task based on the WorkItem params map. This parameters map is
> created based on the userTask defined in a process and its
> internal data mappings. That's from one side.
> With the form builder, what can be done right now is to "decorate"
> a userTask from a business process and define a form based on it.
> So basically we do something like: pick a process, get all the
> userTasks and for each task we end up with a TaskForm.def this
> TaskForm.def can be associated with a TaskDefinition, instead with
> a TaskInstance, promoting reusability as much as we can.
> If we have this TaskDefService, we can make both: the
> WorkItemHandlers and the Form builder to consume the same
> information and reuse that as much as we can. We can include the
> process designer in the loop and make the Company Tasks
> Definitions available for the editor, so the user when want to
> place a new UserTask inside their process, can choose from a list
> of presets instead of filling all the mappings, user assignments,
> presentation details, notifications settings, etc.
>
> * Q: delegation service - since that is on task def level - what
> about sharing this information on concurrent task instances since
> based on the same definition expressions can be evaluated to
> different values
> A: Yes that's the idea. In the static information we can have an
> expresion, in that case the expresion will be evaluated with the
> TaskInstance context and the result will be placed in the task
> instance context, the task def information will not be changed, so
> it can be safely shared between instances. All the taskDef related
> structures should contain "templating" information which means
> something for the company. All the runtime status will be kept in
> the task instances. Think about TaskDef, DelegationsDef,
> NotificationDef, as shortcuts for the users to not define
> everything each time that they want to instantiate a task.
>
> * Q:how is this going to be configured - per service or will there
> be a configuration service as well
> A: good question, we can add this topic for our board session :)
> I'm not a CDI expert, but based on what I've being reading, you
> can provide a default set of services that will be
> automatically instantiated and injected, and then you can provide
> alternatives. If the user doesn't want the default settings he can
> defined the alternatives via a vary basic configuration file.
> Using CDI qualifiers we can, with a pair of annotations, define
> which set implementations (1 configuration) do we want for our
> whole set of services.
>
> Would be really nice to see how this is going to be utilized from
> following perspectives:
>
> * Q: process engine - how process engine will interact with human
> task services
> A: This should not be a problem of this module, and I think that
> this can be considered as an integration problem, so it can be
> fixed with an specialized framework such as switchyard and/or
> camel. I've being reading about the CDI support for them.. and
> I think that we can go in that way.
> The Callbacks/Listener Service is intended to store information
> about the Task Owners and their interest to be notified about a
> tasks events. We need to think about this a little bit more,
> because the Process Engine is not the Task Owner of a TaskInstance
> that has being created by a business process instance. The
> business process instance is the owner of that task in that case,
> so we will need to keep a reference from that process instance
> inside this service. When I say, reference I mean a business key,
> an ID, an endpoint or something to be able to notify the
> interested ones.
> * Q: task client - how to access tasks and to perform operations on
> them"
> A: via the TaskInstanceService, its the same as our TaskClient
> right now. (but restricted for TaskInstances and
> TaskInstancesQueries, not add, not Comments, not attachments, not
> notifications)
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Mauricio Salatino <salaboy at gmail.com
> <mailto:salaboy at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
> I'm back with more wiki pages. I was thinking about how to improve
> the Human Task Module and I came back with this wiki page
> that shows some proposals.
> The main idea behind the proposal is to modularize as much as we
> can the features provided by the human task module. I've also included
> into the proposal the concept of TaskDefinition which will allow
> us to add a nice integration with the form builder (in modeling
> and in runtime phases).
>
> I'm trying to move towards CDI to leverage all the mechanisms
> provided by the framework and the fact that exposing CDI beans
> across different platforms is extremely easy these days.
>
> https://community.jboss.org/wiki/HumanTaskAPIAndDataStructuresProposal
>
> I understand that the changes proposed in the wiki looks quite
> heavy, but I do believe that we can fit the current code base into
> that structure without loosing functionality.
>
> The document is showing APIs and Data Structures only. i think
> that we can assume that all the services implementation will
> represent simple stateless services which will
> insert and read information from a database,
> so architecturally speaking from that perspective the service
> implementations should be straight forward.
>
> I will be filling the Data Structure Sections briefly, but I would
> like to share the main concepts with you guys to gather feedback,
> as always.
>
> Cheers
>
> --
> - MyJourney @ http://salaboy.wordpress.com
> - Co-Founder @ http://www.jugargentina.org
> - Co-Founder @ http://www.jbug.com.ar
>
> - Salatino "Salaboy" Mauricio -
>
>
>
>
> --
> - MyJourney @ http://salaboy.wordpress.com
> - Co-Founder @ http://www.jugargentina.org
> - Co-Founder @ http://www.jbug.com.ar
>
> - Salatino "Salaboy" Mauricio -
>
>
>
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