Language specific business process modelling

With the next release of the Imixs Workflow Engine Imixs provides a way for language specific business process modelling. The upcoming release supports country and language dependent text blocks in a workflow model. With the new attribute ‘locale’ a item value can be formatted in a country and language specific code – independent form the server setting. The new attribute supports the ISO 639 language and also the ISO 3166 country code.

For example to format a date value in German date format the following expression can be used:

<itemvalue format=\"EEEE, d. MMMM yyyy\" locale=\"de_DE\">datdate</itemvalue>

This feature gives more flexibility into the workflow model and allows to model country and language specifiy formats in one model.

Read more about the Imixs Plugins API.

How to test business logic

Testing the business logic of an enterprise application is mostly a little be tricky. In different to simple UI tests which can be performed with typical test-frameworks like HtmlUnit or Selenium, testing the business logic from the view of multiple test users can get very complicated very quickly. For example, if you test several steps in a comprehensive workflow for different users, you need to test if these users are allowed to perform specific tasks in the workflow. In such a scenario you need a group of test users to verify the different situations of access levels and you need to login and logout these users several times during your test case.

With the new release of Imixs Workflow the open source project provides now a powerful test framework which can be easily used in a JUnit Test. The Framework makes use of the Imixs REST API and simplifies the way to test complex workflow scenarios. To build your test case can setup a new WorkflowTestSuite and register a list of users which will be affected from the test case:

@Before
 public void setup() {
 testSuite = WorkflowTestSuite.getInstance();
 testSuite.setHost("http://localhost:8080/minutes-rest/");
 testSuite.joinParty("admin", "password");
 testSuite.joinParty("anna", "password");
 testSuite.joinParty("ronny", "password");
 testSuite.joinParty("eddy", "password");
 testSuite.joinParty("Anonymous", null);
 }

With this setup you can now easily test different scenarios and also create a new process instance or process specific workflow steps.

The following example shows how to test if a user currently has more than one task in his task list:

@Test
 public void worklistTest() throws Exception {
   Assert.assertNotNull(testSuite.getClient("anna"));
   List<ItemCollection> result = testSuite.getWorklist("anna");
   Assert.assertTrue(result.size() > 1);
}

Also the creation and the processing of a single workitem can be performed easily:

@Test
 public void processWorkitemTest() throws Exception {
   ItemCollection workitem=new ItemCollection();
    workitem.replaceItemValue("type", "profile");
    workitem.replaceItemValue("$ModelVersion", "1.0.1"); 
    workitem.replaceItemValue("$processid", 200);
    workitem.replaceItemValue("$activityid", 10);
    workitem.replaceItemValue("txtName","some test");
    workitem=testSuite.processWorkitem(workitem, "anna");
    Assert.assertNotNull(workitem);
    String uid= workitem.getItemValueString("$UniqueID");
    WorkflowTestSuite.log(Level.INFO,"UID=" +uid);
    Assert.assertFalse(uid.isEmpty());
 }

The important aspect of the WorkflowTestSuite is, that each test will be performed through the REST API of the Imxis Workflow Engine. So the test framework guaranties that during a test case the user will be authenticated against the back-end and the specific access level of each users joining the test case can be tested. This simplifies the way to test complex workflows and will improve your enterprise software development.

The Imixs WorkflowTestSuite is part of the upcoming release 3.1.7 of Imxis Workflow. Read more details here.

New Workflow Engine 3.1.6 released

Today we released our latest version 3.1.6 of the Imixs workflow engine. Imixs Workflow is a java framework for a human and adaptive process management. These kinds of software frameworks are typically used for business applications with flexible interactive user interfaces. Examples of these are approval workflows or  workflows in project management software.

The Imixs Workflow Engine is based on the Java Enterprise Specification JEE and provides a transactional and scalable BPM engine with an easy to use modelling tool.

The new release includes different improvements and bug fixes. A major change included in this release is the new project structure. The project is based on Maven and all submodules ‘core’, ‘engine’, ‘web-tools’ and ‘rest-api’ are now managed in a maven multi-module structure. This simplifies the integration and will lead to more and shorter release cycles. According to the new release the Imixs Workflow project has been migrated from Oracles Java.net platform to GitHub. This is an important step towards a more simplified access for developers and IT companies.

Read more on http://www.imixs.org

How to migrate from GlassFish to WildFly

The Imixs Workflow Project was started in the early beginning of the JEE5 Specification. Since than all workflow components where tested on GlassFish V2 and V3. GlassFish is a great application server and still the Reference Implementation for JEE. So we recommend the usage of GlassFish for development and in production for our customers.

But since Oracle announced stopping commercial support for GlassFish and recommend there customers to use WebLogic in productive environments its time for open source projects (like the Imixs project) also look for alternatives. And the brand new JEE Server WildFly from RedHead is such an alternative. WildFly is based on the well known JBoss Application server and a promising platform for JEE Open Source Projects. In the following sections I will explain what is necessary to migrate a JEE Project form GlassFish to WildFly. Continue reading “How to migrate from GlassFish to WildFly”

EJB 3.0 and the TransactionAttributeType REQUIRES_NEW

Today I would like to share my experience about the EJB  TransactionAttributeType “REQUIRES_NEW”. The goal of this attribute is to isolate a method from the current transaction context and run the code in a new separate transaction. The transaction attribute can simply be annotated to a method:

@TransactionAttribute(value = TransactionAttributeType.REQUIRES_NEW)
 public void processSingleWorkitem(ItemCollection aWorkitem) {
 workflowService.processWorkItem(aWorkitem);
 }

But this annotation can become a little bit tricky if you need such a construction in a single EJB. Continue reading “EJB 3.0 and the TransactionAttributeType REQUIRES_NEW”

Imixs migrates to GitHub

We have now started the migration of the Imixs Workflow sources from Subversion to Git. In the past all sources of the Imixs Workflow Project were available on java.net. But now we started the migration to GitHub. This will make it easier for the community to join the project.

In addition we also plan to reorganize the Maven Project structure from a single project structure to a multi-module structure. The reasons for this step are a new deployment plan for the maven artifacts. With the multi-module structure we can simultaneity release all parts of Imixs Workflow. This was also made in the past. But with the new structure we can simplify the maven release process.

Join us on GitHub!

Imixs Workflow 3.1.4 Released

With the latest version of the Open Source Workflow Engine Imixs Workflow the project published a stable and scalable framework for the Java Enterprise architecture. The new release includes several bug fixes and provides new features and functionality.
With the new Business-Rule Plug-in it is now possible to add custom business rules into a workflow model. Business rules can extend the capabilities of a business process in various kinds. Imixs Workflow allows to write a business rule in any script language – like JavaScript Groovy Scala, JRuby, or Clojure.

In addition, the new version of Imixs Workflow is now offering a new calendar based version of the Imixs Workflow Scheduler. With this module, workflows can be triggered time-controlled. A new configuration interface allows to provide timer events in a calendar based format. This method is already known from the chron-jobs of Linux and provides a more flexible way to control event based business processes.
Addition to various minor improvements the exception handling has been extended and adapted. This now allows to implement business processes faster and adapt business logic more flexible way.
Read more on http://www.imixs.org

RELEASE 3.1.2 NOW AVAILABLE

Today we deployed the next release 3.1.2. This release includes bug fixes concerning the follow-up issue from the WorkflowKernel. In addition the WorkflowKernel now supports also a new feature to unregister plug-ins. The ItemCollection supports additional type-save getter methods and provides additional type check methods. This makes the ItemCollection more flexible to use when converting property types.

See the change log for more details: Imixs Change Log

VERSION 3.1.1 NOW RELEASED

Today we released the new version 3.1.1 of the Imixs Workflow engine. This release includes several bug fixes and enhancements to the plug-in API. The new version now supports full HTML Mails. The Mail Plug-In API was extended and provides more flexibility also in adapting the Mail functionality. The size of a search result provided by the Lucene Plug-In can now be limited.

In addition this new release now provides CDI Support for all workflow plug-ins. This extension simplifies the way to write custom workflow plug-ins or extend existing plug-ins.

The Imixs REST Service API was extended and supports a new post-method to receive processed form data in JSON format. This can be used in conjunction with jQuery used in the Imixs Script module.

CDI Support in EAR

There are currently some restriction in using CDI beans provided in different jars contained in one EAR. So see also the following discussions:

https://issues.jboss.org/browse/WELD-1367
http://java.net/jira/browse/GLASSFISH-17396
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7610003/injecting-a-bean-from-a-different-jar-in-weld

Why we need Workflow Engines…

Building robust scalable business applications becomes more and more efficient since the Java Enterprise standard (Java EE) has reached a level where developers can concentrate on the business logic and not about all the backend stuff like database management or security issues.
So from this point it easy today to setup a new business application in short time with reasonable effort. The Java Persistence API (JPA) provides a natural way to map the business objects from the real world into a software system. The JAAS Standard makes it easy to add security. And with different connectors we can connect a business application also to existing applications to exchange any kind of data. So it seems that everything is prepared for developing big business applications. Why should we think about managing the business process? Isn’t it easy enough to add all the required information into our business objects as simple attributes? Continue reading “Why we need Workflow Engines…”