OSWorkflow: A guide for Java developers and architects to integrating open-source Business Process Management: Get your workflow up and running with this ... OSWorkflow project with real-world examples

209 Pages·2007·5.08 MB·English

by  Diego Adrian Naya Lazo

OSWorkflow
A guide for Java developers and architectsto integrating
open-source Business Process Management
Diego Adrian Naya Lazo

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
OSWorkflow
Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing
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First published: August 2007
Production Reference: 1210807
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847191-52-6
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Manager
Diego Adrian Naya Lazo Patricia Weir
Reviewers Project Coordinator
Gabriel Bruno Abhijeet Deobhakta
Hani Suleiman
Juan Pedro Danculovic Indexer
Mithil Kulkarni
Development Editor
Nanda Padmanabhan Proofreader
Chris Smith
Assistant Development Editor
Rashmi Phadnis Production Coordinators
Manjiri Nadkarni
Technical Editors Shantanu Zagade
Rashmi Phadnis
Saurabh Singh Cover Designer
Shantanu Zagade
Editorial Manager
Dipali Chittar
About the Author
Diego Naya Lazo is a Chief Enterprise Architect living in Buenos Aires,
Argentina. He currently works for Argentina's biggest healthcare provider and has
more than 10 years of experience in the IT industry. He has participated in several
projects as a hands-on software architect and performed the technical lead role in
many companies. His interest in computer programming began with his desire to
create the most vivid 3D animations as a graphic designer at the age of 15.
His interests range from Enterprise Architecture to SOA and BPM technology. He
is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect and holds other certifications such as: SCJP,
SCWCD, MCSA, and Security+. He is also a member of the WWISA and GEAO
enterprise architects' associations as well as an active developer of the OSWorkflow
project. He holds a Bachelors degree in IT and is currently enrolled in an
MBA program.
Away from work, Diego enjoys traveling all around the world with his family. You
can reach him at [email protected].
I want to thank Gustavo Aguirre, my role model and mentor, for
giving me advice and my reviewers Juan Pedro Danculovic and
Gabriel Bruno, for loving this as much as I do. Hani Suleiman, for
your commitment to the project and the whole OSWorkflow team.

This book is dedicated to Mariela and Mauro—You are the light that
shines on my path through life.
About the Reviewers
Gabriel A. Bruno lives in Argentina and has been working since 1997 in the IT
industry. Among his various activities are consulting services in many companies,
mainly in the financial industry, and he also has performed activities as an instructor
of OO analysis and design, and data structures.
In 1998 he discovered the open-source world through the GNU Linux operating
system, which he adopted to perform his duties. Two years later, he began to use
Java and subsequently the J2EE platform professionally.
He's currently working as a Java Architect for an important health insurance
company in Argentina.
I greatly thank Diego Naya for including me in this endeavor.
Hani Suleiman is the CTO of Formicary, a company specializing in integration
and portal solutions for financial firms. He also is an elected individual member of
the JCP Executive Committee, as well as serving on a number of enterprise-related
Expert Groups.
Juan Pedro Danculovic received his Computer Science Analyst degree at the
UNLP-La Plata, Argentina in 2001.
He has researched in several areas such as object-oriented and web applications
design, and also web personalization aspects in web services and applications.
He has also taught web application architecture aspects courses at the UNLP.
He is currently working in the IT Architecture department at the biggest health care
services company in Argentina.

Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: BPM and Workflow Basics 5
Business Process Orientation 5
BPR and BPM 6
Business Process Improvement 7
What's a BPMS? 8
Traceability and Auditing 10
Different Kinds of BPMS 11
System Orchestration with System-Oriented BPMS 12
System Orchestration 13
Enabling Workgroup Collaboration with People-Oriented BPMS 15
Components of a BPM Solution 16
The Workflow Management Coalition 17
How Components Map to the BPM Lifecycle 19
Open-Source BPMS 20
Summary 20
Chapter 2: OSWorkflow Introduction and Basics 21
Downloading and Installing OSWorkflow 21
Getting a Taste from the Distribution 22
Navigating the Sample User Interface 22
OSWorkflow Basics 27
XML Definition Files 27
An Example Workflow 28
Steps, Actions, and Results: The Workflow Building Blocks 29
Testing the Workflow Definition 33
Splits and Joins 34
Setting Status and Old Status Values 37
Sending an Email Automatically 38
Table of Contents
Visual Process Modeling 43
Visually Creating the Holiday Example 43
Looking at the End Result 47
Ways to Implement OSWorkflow 48
OSWorkflow as a Workflow Layer 48
OSWorkflow as a Centralized Workflow Server 48
Adding the SOAP Bindings 49
Summary 50
Chapter 3: Adding Code to our Definitions 51
How to Deal with Transient Data 51
Variable Interpolation in the Definition 52
PropertySet and Transient Variables 53
Exploring PropertySet 53
Using the PropertySet to Store Variable Data 54
Using the PropertySet to Retrieve Stored Data 54
Cleaning the PropertySet 55
Configuring the PropertySet 55
Adding Code to our Definition 56
FunctionProviders 56
Creating our first FunctionProvider 56
FunctionProvider Types 58
Defining a Custom Function Provider 58
BeanShell Scripting 60
Built-in Functions 60
Conditions 61
Creating our own Condition 62
Registers 64
Using the LogRegister 64
Implementing a Register 65
Validators 65
Creating a Customer Identifier Validator 66
BeanShell Validators 66
Other Useful Descriptor Concepts 67
Finish Actions 67
Auto Actions 68
Summary 68
Chapter 4: Using OSWorkflow in your Application 69
OSWorkflow Configuration 69
Registering our Process Descriptors 69
Embedding OSWorkflow into your Application 71
Starting a Workflow 71
Executing Actions 72
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
What's the Status? 72
What can I Do? 73
The Useful Abstract States 73
Querying the Workflow Store 74
Querying the Workflow Factory 75
Inspecting the Workflow Descriptor from Code 76
Using the Workflow Configuration Object 76
Workflow Interface Implementations 77
Loading the Descriptors—the Workflow Factory 77
Loading Descriptors from a Database 78
Persisting Instance Information 79
Persistence Choices 79
Configuring the JDBC Store 80
PropertySet Persistence 81
Configuring the JDBC PropertySet 81
Unit Testing your Workflow 82
What is JUnit? 82
Running the Tests 85
Integrating with Spring 85
The Object Registry—BeanFactory 86
Using our BeanFactory 89
Transaction Support in Spring 90
The SpringTypeResolver 92
Workflow Security 93
Step Permissions 93
Action Restrictions 94
Step Ownership 95
Extending User and Group Authentication and Authorization 95
Summary 97
Chapter 5: Integrating Business Rules with JBoss Rules 99
Incorporating Business Logic into Business Processes 99
Simple Logic with Conditional Results 100
Complex Business Logic 104
What is "JBoss Rules"? 104
Creating a Rule 105
Executing a Rule 106
Integrating with OSWorkflow 107
RulesCondition 107
RulesFunctionProvider 112
Summary 113
[ iii ]