[jboss-user] [jBPM] - Design pattern for routing to multiple jBPM processes?

Jim B do-not-reply at jboss.com
Mon Mar 25 12:31:22 EDT 2013


Jim B [https://community.jboss.org/people/jamesbeam] created the discussion

"Design pattern for routing to multiple jBPM processes?"

To view the discussion, visit: https://community.jboss.org/message/804680#804680

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I am using jBPM 5.4 with persistence.  I am still a jBPM noob, so thanks in advance for your patience getting through this explanation...

I have a ksession that will be running multiple long-running processes.  These process flows are the same - only the variables in the processes are different.  

The basic use case it that I have events coming into a "router" that based upon message content will be passed to an existing process instance (if the related process exists).  If a process instance does not yet exist for that event, a new one is created.  

I would greatly appreciate any thoughts on design patterns to implement this (managing processes in the kession and routing events to them).

Relating to design, I have considered; 

1) Create a single-node process with a "routing" WorkItemHandler node.  This instance will receive the event and perform all of the checking/routing/process instantiation logic.  Basically, iterate through each process in the kession for the 

2) Create business rules that checks for (and creates) objects in the ksession representing each process that is running.

   Pseudo code for rules would be something like:

   rule "Send to existing process"
        when
              $newEventBean : NewEventBean()
              $myProcessBean : MyProcessBean(subject matches $newEventBean.subject)
        then 
             <signal  $myProcessBean.processId  with $newEventBean>

   rule "Create if process doesn't exist"
        when
              $newEventBean : NewEventBean()
              not($myProcessBean : MyProcessBean(subject matches $newEventBean.subject))
         then 
              $newProcessBean: NewProcessBean();
              $newProcessBean.subject = $newEventBean.subject;
              $newProcessBean.instantiate(thisKsession);       <<---inserts new process instance into ksession
              insert($newProcessBean);

     (and when a process ends, it would need to retract the related newProcessBean)

I am more familiar with java development than drools rule-jbpm integration, so I am leaning towards option 1.  (Specifically, for example, I'm not sure how to create a process from a rule or how to signal one, so I'd more likely to implement methods like NewProcessBean.instantiate() in a java method in my newProcessBean anyway  :) )

Any thoughts about option 1 or 2?  Am I missing a more obvious/better solution?

(Possibly something like sending a signal to a ksession where the correct process catches it and acknowledges it in some way - so that if an acknowledgement isn't received a new process is created.  Can a process be configured to ALWAYS catch a signal AFTER another process, so that my "final" process could act like an "otherwise" statement and would just instantiate a new process?)

Thank you again for any thoughts,

-J
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