[jboss-dev-forums] [Design of JBoss jBPM] - Re: execution transitions, data flow and other associations

[brittm]

Tom, a definite yes to more types of relationships.  

My business (telecom) requires more complex relationships than jpdl provides.  I need the ability to syncronize without merge on certain nodes across processes and sub-processes  as well as tokens--and to synchronize various ways.  I also need the ability to "multi-parent", or "share", a process.

I've already had to build the ability to multi-parent a process (orthagonal to jbpm) and am starting to work on doing the same thing for synchronization without merge.  Here are two use cases:

Synchronization without merge.
A customer may buy several complex services from us, each of which has its own provisioning process.  Each product can be billed when it reaches a particular state midway through its execution, but the customer cannot be billed until all products on a single order have become billable.  Here, we need to synchronize across subprocesses, without merging.

Multi-Parented processes.
Again, a customer may buy several complex services from us, each of which has its own provisioning process.  At some time, we'll want to schedule a technician to visit the customer's location and set up as much as possible in one visit.  The scheduling and management of the technician's visit is its own process and becomes a loosely coupled 'subprocess' to several other product provisioning process.

The 'multi-parent' bit is probably outside the scope of your question, but these examples underscore a need to define node-to-node relationships that are both more complex than what we have now and that extend beyond the bounds of a single process instance.

Thanks,
Britt


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