jBPM5 Developer Guide

Table of Contents

• Preface

• Chapter 1: Why Do We Need Business Process Management?
• Theoretical background
• Standard specifications – introduction, analysis, and explanations
• jBPM5 – technical details and common practices
• BPM conceptual background
• Business processes
• Sequence of business activities
• Activities are performed by business users and business applications
• Humans and systems/applications behave differently
• Humans and systems/applications can be classified differently
• Achieving a business goal
• The Business Process Management (BPM) discipline
• BPM stage 1 – discovering your business processes
• BPM stage 2 – formalizing your new processes
• BPM stage 3 – implementing your technical assets
• Business entity model
• Coordinating and orchestrating activities
• BPM stage 4 – runtime
• BPM stage 5 – monitoring
• BPM stage 6 – improvements
• Applying BPM in the real world
• BPMS checklist
• Summary

• Chapter 2: BPM Systems Structure
• Key components in a BPMS
• BPMS core
• The semantic module
• The process engine
• Process instance structures
• Process engine execution mechanisms
• Facts about the two approaches
• Transactions and persistence
• Human Task Component
• Human tasks – life cycle
• Human tasks – APIs
• The identity component
• Audit/history logs
• Process engine components summary
• Components inside jBPM5
• Knowledge-centric APIs
• Knowledge Builder
• Knowledge Base
• Knowledge Session
• BPM systems surrounding topics
• Service-oriented architecture
• WS-BPEL and service orchestration
• Enterprise Service Bus
• Rule engines
• Classic BPM system and rule engine integration
• Event-driven architecture and complex event processing
• Summary

• Chapter 3: Using BPMN 2.0 to Model Business Scenarios
• BPMN 2.0 introduction
• Process Modelling Conformance
• BPMN elements
• Flow objects
• Connecting objects
• Data
• Grouping
• Artifacts
• Task types
• BPMN 2.0 introduction summary
• Modelling business scenarios with BPMN 2.0
• Hospital emergency scenario
• Technical perspective
• Hospital emergency technical overview

• Summary

• Chapter 4: Knowing Your Toolbox
• Setting up our environment
• Downloading the jBPM5 installer
• Running the jBPM5 installer
• Installed tools' description
• JBoss Application Server
• Drools Guvnor
• jBPM5 process server
• jBPM5 GWT console
• Web process designer
• Eclipse IDE – evaluation sample project
• jBPM GWT console – evaluation sample process
• jBPM GWT console summary
• Drools Guvnor and web process designer
• Frequently asked questions
• Summary

• Chapter 5: The Process Designer
• An IDE for our processes
• So many jBPM Designers, which one should I use?
• The JBPM5 Eclipse plugin
• Web Process Designer
• The Eclipse BPMN 2.0 plugin
• Interacting with Web Process Editor
• Creating new processes
• Accessing an existing process
• Modifying the existing processes
• Deleting the existing processes
• Implementing our first process
• The Web Process Designer sections
• Toolbar
• Shape Repository
• Editing canvas
• The Properties panel
• Footer
• Emergency Bed Request Process First Design
• Configuring the process properties
• Configuring the Start Event node
• Configuring sequence flow elements
• Configuring task nodes
• Testing the process definition
• Emergency Bed Request Process V2
• Configuring process properties
• Configuring the Exclusive Gateway node
• Configuring the Sequence Flow elements
• Configuring task nodes
• Configuring the End Event nodes
• Testing the process definition
• Emergency Bed Request Process V3
• Configuring process properties
• Configuring Intermediate Signal events
• Configuring the Terminate End events
• Testing the process definition
• Process modeling summary
• Web Process Designer advanced topics
• Importing process definitions
• Visual process validation
• Domain-specific tasks
• Work Item definition editor
• Using Work Item Definitions in the Web Process Designer
• Service Repository
• Web Process Designer integration with Service Repository
• Summary

• Chapter 6: Domain-specific Processes
• BPMN 2.0 task
• Domain-specific behavior in jBPM5
• The work item handler interface
• Synchronous interactions
• Asynchronous interactions
• Executor component
• External service interactions
• Summary

• Chapter 7: Human Interactions
• Human interactions
• Human interactions inside our processes
• Web Services Human Task specification
• Human tasks service APIs
• Human tasks life cycle
• External identity component integration
• Human tasks and business processes' interactions
• jBPM5 human task component overview
• Human task service APIs example
• The human task work item handler
• The user/group callbacks
• HT work item handler and UserGroupCallback example
• Task list oriented user interfaces
• Task lists
• Group task lists
• Task forms
• Building our own user interfaces
• Summary

• Chapter 8: Persistence and Transactions
• Why we need persistence mechanisms
• Persisting long-running processes
• Persistence in jBPM5
• But how does it work internally?
• Why we need a transaction mechanism
• Simple jBPM5 persistence and transactions configuration
• Advanced jBPM5 persistence and transactions configuration
• How much robustness do we need?
• Frequently asked questions
• Summary

• Chapter 9: Smart Processes Using Rules
• Good old integration patterns
• The Drools Rule Engine
• What Drools needs to work
• The power of the rules applied to our processes
• Gateway conditions
• Java-based conditions
• Rule-based conditions
• Multi-process instance evaluations
• Rule-based process selection and creation
• Summary

• Chapter 10: Reactive Processes Using Drools Fusion
• What is an event?
• Event characteristics
• Event-driven architectures
• Complex event processing
• Drools Fusion
• Event definitions
• System clocks
• Temporal operators
• The Coincides temporal operator
• Temporal operators summary
• Sliding window support
• Events life cycle management
• Drools Fusion in action
• Mixing processes and events
• Summary

• Chapter 11: Architectural and Integration Tips
• Defining our architecture
• Using multiple knowledge sessions
• Defining a knowledge context
• One session per knowledge context level
• One session per process instance
• One session per process category
• Multiple sessions' coordination
• Summary

• Index