[jboss-user] [JBoss jBPM] - My experience to promote jBPM on a large scale project

[fmarchioni]

Dear all,
sorry for pestering so much the forum today :-)
Not talking about bugs but I'd like to share "commercial" thoughts about jBPM. I have completed an analysis for re-engineering a BPM application which is using the old Oracle Workflow tool.

Though I have been able to explain to the management that jBPM is a layer to your processes written in Java which makes it quite flexible, scalable, easy to integrate with a mix of systems via the Service Bus etc. etc. critics came about the graphical interface of jBPM-plugin which is poor.

The Java 2D graphics isn't much exciting and it's not easy to draw very large processes with the Eclipse plugin, worse then all, all the Nodes are drawn with the same square icon while on huge workflows every kind of node has a different  icon and that's important because the User can understand much better the workflow when the icons are comprensive and clear.

Ok, you can use every kind of editor to draw your process and let the developer translate into into jPDL's XML.

Ok but at runtime ? ok do you show your workflow using the same graphics ? and most important you should be able to interact with the workflow for example clicking on Nodes you might get info / unlock a Node etc.

I have suggested to invest a little of the budget on creating a plugin (written in Flash since they like silly nice-looking gadgets :-) ) that draws an interactive client for the Workflow, based on the jPDL and the Process runtime data.

Yet the management is not quite convinced about jBPM and honestly speaking some critics about the graphical interface I think are true, or at least appear true for the basic user.

What do you think about it ?
Thanks for your time
Francesco




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