[jbpm-dev] Features and jBPM 5

Here are features that I have seen a need for in jBPM while using it at our various Red Hat clients. These comments are based on the currently supported 3.2 branch. 1) The ability to create Typed Actions which can be plugged into the Eclipse UI [similar to Drools Flow] 2) Truly plug-able Identity Management backing to JAAS. 3) Email Notification should instead be a general notification framework. a. Oracle BPEL supports this functionality - See: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E11036_01/integrate.1013/b28981/notif.htm b. Notifications should be sent to secondary service via JMS to ensure that no notifications are sent until the Transaction completes successfully. c. Out of the Box Email Notification Support for HTML Email and multiple SMTP servers [similar to what was created for jBPM 4] 4) Reporting; this has been suggested in jBPM 5 blogs. a. Contact me for specifics; we can questionnaire our clients. 5) Service layer to more easily create custom UI for processes. 6) More Complex Form Generation for Tasks via XForms?! 7) Better Audit Logging configuration OOTB. a. Ability to offload this from the main database to a secondary store [like warehouse]. 8) OOTB use of JBoss Cache. 9) Cluster-ready timer executions. 10) Keep Decision Handler plug-ability. a. Provide OOTB Drools support. b. Reuse existing BRMS tooling and provide jBPM Eclipse integration with BRMS?! for Drools Decisions via Wizard. 11) Bring Maven Support in-house from the current Codehaus offering [http://mojo.codehaus.org/jboss-packaging-maven-plugin/par-mojo.html] 12) Support Process Upgrades OOTB. a. If a new Process Definition is added because the previous one is flawed, give users the ability to bring existing processes to the current version from the jBPM console. Additionally, I fundamentally believe that all our SOA initiative should start and end in workflow. The integration in SOA-P currently for jBPM and back is not ideal. To create a Service, it should be as simple as configuring an input type and output type in jBPM, configure if the process should be request/response or async, and registering within the jBPM workflow the appropriate ESB gateways. So, my suggestion is to pull the gateway concept into jBPM directly. This has worked well for both Oracle BPEL and Biztalk.