[jboss-user] [JBoss jBPM] - Complex business process orchestration

[isterin]

So we're faced with a bit of a dilemma and I'm wonderinf if someone can shed some light.

We plan on using jBPM in our workflow applications.  The overall busienss process for the application is a bit complex.

So we are going to have multiple levels of subprocesses (my understanding is that jBPM supports that).  So without actually providing a BPEL and/or JPDL file here, I'm going to demonstrate a part of it using pseudo...

<process>
  |   <subprocess1>
  |     <subprocess1.1>
  |       <task1/>
  |       <task2/>
  |     </subprocess1.1>
  |   </subprocess1>
  |   <subprocess2>
  |     <subprocess2.1>
  |       <task1/>
  |       <task2/>
  |     </subprocess2.1>
  |   </subprocess2>
  | <process>

Ok, so with that in mind, say subprocess1 and subprocess2 are sequential (flow in BPEL).  (We don't care whether we orchestrate this in JPDL and/or BPEL, as long as it does the job).  The tasks are flows as well.  So basically some subprocesses will be sequention, some not.

The issue is that once say subprocess1->subprocess1.1->task1 is completed, it's marked complete.  Say the task is filling out some form.  After task2 is completed, the subprocess1.1 is closed.  We need a way to at any given point and time redo task1, basically from a web app perspective, the customer needs to be able to edit a form.  We also thought about not closing certain subprocesses, but the sequential ones must be closed, therefore the issue is how do we model a business process (and if it can even be done), that will allow us to peform various tasks from processes that are already closed.

Do we define tasks within the main process that are basically random flow tasks that can be performed in parallel to any subprocesses?  Or is there some other way of doing this?

Thanks.

Ilya Sterin

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