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

Mon Oct 23 04:26:42 EDT 2006

ok.  some very interesting views have passed the stage here.

On the basics, i think we are in agreement.  jBPM should be mostly concerned with its core expertise: process executions.  All other things should be optional.

Such related things are the identity component, the default UI, task management, process analysis and modelling, ...

Let me try and give this discussion the original (limited) focus:  Should we add this one String field to the task that serves as a UI task form identifier.   This would be a bit similar as the actorId field.

Pro's: every UI technology (amongst which the default one) will be able to use this field to link the task with the form.  

Con's: if not used, will this empty field harm performance ?

I'm not trying to settle the fylosophical debates on how and when the UI has to be separated from the core process.  IMO, these are similar discussions as 10 years ago: "how OO classes should be modelled".  It is important that there is no hard dependency on any UI technology.  And secondly, multiple (not all) UI technologies will be able to make use of it.  So i see this as a convenience integration point for UI's.   Without the need to get to the bottom of the 'taste'-discussion about what should be where... Let's leave that up to our users.

I don't think we should be disabling features to prevent people from making mistakes.  Who would have ever created gunpowder in that kind of reasoning ?  We have to explain good practices and tradeoffs in the docs and with sensible defaults.  IMO, not by removing optional integration features.

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