Presentation Bejug March 2009

APRIL 7, 2023 | SLIDE 1

www.realdolmen.com

Introduction to jBPM 4

APRIL 7, 2023 | SLIDE 2(*) Input: “Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2008”


WHAT’S THE FUSS ALL ABOUT?

“Business process” An (organized) way of “doing things” … with certain goal (eg making money)

Not an IT concept 1723-1790, Adam Smith: The pin factory 1863-1947, Henry Ford: mass production

– Assembly lines


NOT AN IT CONCEPT

1900-1993, William Edwards Deming Japanese production boom (after WWII) Quality control techniques Improved production through insight in processes

(Deming) quality circle

PLAN

DO

CHECK

ACT


BUSINESS PROCESSES ARE EVERYWHERE

Tax system



Tax system Library: acquiring and returning a book



Tax system Library: acquiring and returning a book Ordering a ticket for a concert



Tax system Library: acquiring and returning a book Ordering a ticket for a concert Getting up in the morning



Tax system Library: acquiring and returning a book Ordering a ticket for a concert Getting up in the morning … Any company - any product - any service

They all have business processes

Which means Business processes = doing business


THE POWER OF PICTURES

Communication medium the diagram Simple and easy to understand


BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT

Business processes are ubiquitous This doesn’t mean that people are aware of them … This doesn’t mean that they are controlled or guided … This doesn’t mean that everyone is using the same process …

Managing processes Discipline Organizational change needed

One must know, understand and follow the business process Thinking in processes, intra- and interbusiness

Control / guiding / insight Is the work that’s being done in comformance with the process?

Technology can help, but it is not required to ‘do BPM’ ‘BPM suites’



It all depends on the stakeholders point of view

Perception Vendor



It all depends on the stakeholders point of view!

Perception Process analyst




Perception Manager




Perception Project manager



• Expectations are high!

• In the end, the people in the trenches will determine the success of your BPM project

• You can have the most effective designed process in the world

• It’s useless if people don’t use it• People need to understand it• People need to be trained and consulted

Reality



• And what about management?• Today: ‘crisis management’

• Treating symptons, not the cause

• BPM allows to provide insight• Managers need to have a deep understanding

of how the business operates to make correct decisions

• Insight allows to change & optimise the current business processes

• Reactive proactive predictive mgmt


BPM SELLING POINTS

Bridge between IT & the business No disconnection between

What business expects What IT delivers

And forcing the business people to align

Business changes are rapidely implemented Agile

Visibility Monitoring, CEP, KPI, data-mining, … Making decisions in real-time


CONCLUSION

So by now you should know BPM is not about buying a killer-app and using it

(But that’s often how it is sold)

Technology can be used to unlock BPM for your company BPM products (or ‘suites’)

This all sounds nice, doesn’t it? … so why is not every software BPM (yet)?


BPM MARKET

Many players Open-source and commercial

Long history

But … no standardization,no specs, …

Some initiatives OMG, OASIS, WFMX

BPMN, BPEL, XPDL


BPM LIFECYLE

BPM products Currently: no specs, no portability, … Only common functionality of BPM suites: the BPM lifecycle:

Design/modeling

Execution

Monitoring

Optimization


BPM LIFECYCLE

Problem: translate diagram to executable code Typical BPM marketing: business analyst ‘plug & play’

(Un)fortunately the world is gray– Transactions, integrations with other systems, performance, …

Design/modeling


BPM LIFECYCLE

Jbpm approach Recognize that there is difference between business-wise

business processes and technical processes Developers-friendly BPM framework

How to communicate? One source, different views …

Design/modeling


BPM LIFECYCLE

Execution


BPM LIFECYCLE

Execution

Jbpm parser

Jbpm Pojo’

s

Jbpm Service

s


BPM LIFECYCLE

Monitoring



Really, it’s not an invention of IT

PLAN

DO

CHECK

ACT

Design/modeling

Execution

Monitoring

Optimization

Deming circle BPM lifecycle


JBPM 4 VS JBPM 3: BPM MODELING

A discipline Drawing the diagram == the final step of process design Specialized staff needed (with business knowlegde)

No standarization Proprietary symbols and semantics No diagram portability

BPMN effort (OMG) Business process modeling Notation Open standard for drawing business processes


TYPICAL BPM SOFTWARE

BPM


JBOSS JBPM TO THE RESCUE

BPM engine http://www.jbpm.org Built on Hibernate

Development started 2003 Tom Baeyens Koen Aers Alejandro Guizar Thomas Diesler Heiko Braun

Current: 3.3.1 GA / 4.0.0 A2

http://www.jbpm.org/


Open source BPM solution No black-box magic

Embeddable in any application Engine == 1 jar Non-monolithic approach

Process language-independent (and spec-independent) Not BPEL centred as many vendors Based on VM for process languages (PVM)

Easy for developers JPDL Pojo based

Performant Hibernate(*)

Jboss umbrella

(*)http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/2008/04/14/short-jbpm-performance-showdown/

JBPM TO THE RESCUE!

This is only a teaser ;-)


JBPM: PROCESS PLATFORM


WHY NOT BPEL AS MAIN LANGUAGE?

Business Process Execution Language Many (major) vendors (eg Oracle, IBM, …)

Web-service centric language Input has to be a webservice Output is a new webservice Communication == only through WSDL interfaces

Xpath, Xquery Cumbersome … and no fun of development

jBPM BPEL is not the (only) way to go Support for BPEL through PVM

It makes sense in some environments But … jPDL is so much easier for developers


EXAMPLE PROCESS


JBPM’S BENEFITS

Managing this process definition with the jBPM runtime allows To start and continue a process for a given book To retrieve the global current unfinished tasks To automatically trigger a Java class or predefined activity on a certain date To attach custom Java handler classes

eg a Java call to the mainframe library system in Brussels To retrieve statistics about past and running processes …

To ‘do BPM’ in developers-friendly/comfortable approach


WHY USE A BPM ENGINE?

Any BPM app can be built without jBPM But how many if-else’s you would need? Maintain it? How easy will it be to change the flow?


WHY USE A BPM ENGINE?

BPM engine ~ state machine It’ s no rocket science

jBPM Years of experience solving

Common problems Uncommon problems And event edgier cases All in one download

Don’t reinvent the wheel … Leave that up to wheel-builders

Presentation Bejug March 2009

Technology

Transcript of Presentation Bejug March 2009