[jboss-user] [jBPM] New message: "Re: Upgrade from JBPM3 to JBPM4 woes"

[Ronald van Kuijk]

User development,

A new message was posted in the thread "Upgrade from JBPM3 to JBPM4 woes":

http://community.jboss.org/message/524900#524900

Author  : Ronald van Kuijk
Profile : http://community.jboss.org/people/kukeltje

Message:
--------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, thanks, really, really appreciate this kind of feedback. Let me comment on your remarks.
 
1 and 2
The binary compatibility was deemed impossible almost from the beginning. All this is related to the introduction of the PVM. There were a lot of brainstorm sessions to see if it would be possible. The amount of time that had to be put into achieving this would unfortunately be way to high.  For later versions (5, 6 etc), backwardscompatibility is achieved by the way the process is stored. So the choice was made not to go down this road but at least put some effort in process conversion. Here to the 80-20 rule was applied and everyone was aware that manual effort had to be put in to this. There are still changes added to the conversion tool, so if you guys have done some things which improve it (even if you are not going to use jBPM 4) we'd appreciate the feedback (~contribution )
 
3
Well, yes, happens every now and then to us to. But the only way to prevent this is to code *everything* in plain java and/or only use libraries that do not depend on *anything* else but a plain jre.  :-)
 
4
Spring support was initially contributed by http://www.inze.be/andries/2009/06/28/documentation-spring-jbpm-integration/(but close to the project) and extended by people within the project. Regarding the integration itself, noone thinks it is complete. Things need to be done, but then again, as can be seen in some posts, there are users that are aware of this, but rather 'invent' workarounds instead of helping out. I know this is often a difficult choice in projects, but it is one of my biggest frustrations, believe me.... btw, have you seen http://www.inze.be/andries/2009/06/28/documentation-spring-jbpm-integration/ I'm no spring adept (do not opose it either, just never seemed to have the need for it, jumping on the seam bandwagon)
 
5
Doesn't 5 contradict the 1 in the 'good' department to a large extend? jBPM is still very flexible and extensible. Some people have a hard time switching. They were probably the ones that were very into jBPM 3. I know I had this problem myself. The services in jBPM 4 use commands 'internally' but adding commands yourself is not that difficult. Within commands you have full access to the database model so you can still do anything you want. The GPD for 4 is not as advanced as the one for 3, I think I agree with that. There are not a lot of other designers afaik, so that makes me wonder why you use 'GUI Designer*s*' (plural). A nice webbased BPMN2 designer is currently under development http://www.signavio.com/en/company/blog/104-prozessausfuehrung-mit-bpmn-20-und-jbpm.html and if e.g. eclipse comes with a BPMN2 editor as well, I'm sure that will be leveraged. So A great future ahead if I may say so, brighter then the 3 universe...
 
Think I should make this into a specific document (this forum allows promoting threads to documents... nice) since it touches on core things.
 
Whatever choice you guys and gilrs eventually make, thanks for the constructive feedback.
 
Cheers,
 
Ronald

--------------------------------------------------------------

To reply to this message visit the message page: http://community.jboss.org/message/524900#524900