[jboss-dev-forums] [Design of JBoss jBPM] - Re: extending form / task functionality

[cocampo]

"tom.baeyens at jboss.com" wrote : What you guys didn't yet show me is the problem i (or our users) would run into if they didn't separate ui from process logic.
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  | I don't yet see an intrinsic downside of mixing UI with process logic.
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  | I agree that UI and process logic should not be FORCEFULLY TIED together.   But i don't see a problem in offering an optional form field in the task that can optionally be used by UI technologies.
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  | This can already cover most situations where there will be 1 UI technology involved for each task form. 

Tom, I fully agree with you. You shouldn't have to declare this form field, unless you want it. Also, I think that having the pageflow in another file is better, so you can handle different aspects of your process (yes, I believe UI is also part of a process definition, maybe not in jBPM - yet - but yes in business process modeling in a broad sense, more on this later), and still having a relationship among them.

Regarding complexity, you WILL have complexity in your XML, no matter what you do, if you have a process with, lets say 200+ tasks (including human and computer tasks, as I've seen in the past). So, we can't avoid complexity, but we can think of ways to handle it. Maybe, we should start by defining (or just posting as a Wiki) best practices to handle complexity in large processes, and even think how jBPM and GPD could help to such matter. But a good starting point would be to separate concerns (i.e. process definition and UI, yet they would be related somehow, maybe by a form field as proposed by Tom).

Regarding what (IMHO) could define a business process (in a broad sense, not limited to a BPM technology), I think these elements would be:

- workflows (defined by tasks, roles, applications, artifacts, business rules, business events, business goals)
- disciplines (defined by best practices, techniques, standards, methods)
- guidelines (including templates, procedures - guides for using tools and artifacts, etc.-)

I don't intend this to be an exhaustive list; I think you can't have all of these elements modeled in any BPM tool available. However, I believe you can completely model workflows (as defined before) with JBoss's jBPM/Seam/Rules (maybe with the exception of automatic monitoring of business goals, but that should be a possibe requirement for jBPM BAM or whatever its name will be). Though, I don't know if this would be useful to all of you guys, or perhaps you have a different understanding of business process modeling.

Regards.

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