the open source workflow technology for business applications
Today we launched our international support for Imixs-Office-Workflow.
Imixs-Office-Workflow is an open source platform. It helps you to digitize your business processes, connecting your employees, customers and partners. Take advantage of a powerful integrated workflow suite for your business.
In the following short tutorial I will explain how you can manage multiple versions of a workflow model and how Imixs-Workflow supports multiple model versions in a productive business application.
The Imixs-Workflow engine supports multiple model versions from the same process model. Each time a running process instance is updated, the Imixs-Workflow engine applies the same model version as the process instance was created with. Therefor the Imixs-Workflow engine compares the internal model version with the model versions provided by the model repository. In case the current model version is no longer supported, the active process instance will be automatically upgraded to the latest version available in the repository. With this feature it is possible to manage different versions of the same workflow process. To distinguish different model versions, you need a versioning concept.
The concept of “Semantic Versioning” from Tom Preston-Werner will be the basis for the versioning method of process models. Applying the semantic versioning, the version number is separated into three digits:
1. 2. 3
| | |-- patch level
| |-------- minor version
|-------------- major versionThe first digit indicates the major version number. This is in our case the general main release of a model. The major version number should only be increased if a general redesign of whole the process model was done.
The minor version number is used for new functions and enhancements in the process flow. For example after adding a new task or a new event, the minor version number should be increased.
The last digit is used for the Patch Level of a model. It indicates bug fixes or changes of naming or wording.
The semantic versioning can be perfectly used for the BPMN model file. This helps you to manage different version within your modellng tool:
invoicing-1.0.0.bpmn
We typically prefix the filename with the process name to maintain different workflows in the same directory. In the example above we have an Invoicing workflow in the version 1.0.0. The model file itself should also be stored in a code repository like Git. This allows you to remove deprecated models from your code base.
Also the Imixs-Workflow Model holds a separate version number. This version number is mandatory and can be maintained in the Workflow Profile of the Imixs-BPMN modeling tool:
We prefix the version number again with the process name followed by a two-digit version number. Applied to the “Semantic Versioning” only the Major and Minor Version number is used here!
The reason for this shorter version number is, that the model repository of a business application should not hold different patch levels of the same model. Remember, the patch level is only used to indicates bug fixes or changes of naming or wording. Only if the model is extended functional the minor version number is increased or in case of a new process variant the major version number:
Modelversion File Version Comment
----------------------------------------------------------
invocing-1.0 invocing-1.0.0.bpmn First draft
invocing-1.0.1.bpmn typo
invocing-1.1 invocing-1.1.0.bpmn additional approval
invocing-1.1.1.bpmn change mail message
invocing-1.1.2.bpmn change history text
invocing-2.0 invocing-2.0.0.bpmn new Invoicing process
In this example version 1.0 of the Invoicing process was first patch with a typo and next extended with an additional approval, which leads to Minor version 1.1. In this version again then some text changes were made. And finally a complete new Invoicing process was designed, with leads to the new Major version 2.0.
From the view of the running process instances only 3 different model versions exist. From the view of the code repository the model file exists in 6 different versions.
With the concept of “Semantic Versioning” process models can be easily handled in different versions. Even if you need to patch an already running model, you don’t need to worry about polluting the model repository of your business application if you use only 2 digits for internal model version.
Imixs-Workflow Version 4.4.4 is now released! The latest version includes two important improvements and shows a much better performance.
The most important improvement of version 4.4 was the transaction support of Lucene event logs. With version 4.4.4 of Imixs-Workflow, this feature is now stable and shows also a very good performance in long running transactions.
With the new project Imixs-Mock you can now simulate your Imixs-Workflow BPMN models in an easy way. The project provides a full mock of the Imixs-Workflow engine and allows to test and simulate different workflow scenarios. Imixs-Mock simulates the full processing life-cycle including all workflow plug-ins. You can specify also a subset of plug-ins to test specific business logic in your workflow project.
To add the mock into your own workflow project just add the following dependencies:
<dependency> <groupId>org.imixs.workflow</groupId> <artifactId>imixs-mock</artifactId> <version>4.4.0</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <!-- JUnit Tests --> <dependency> <groupId>junit</groupId> <artifactId>junit</artifactId> <version>4.8.1</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.mockito</groupId> <artifactId>mockito-all</artifactId> <version>1.9.5</version> <scope>test</scope> </dependency>
Now you can write your jUnit test class to verify your BPMN model. See the following example code:
@Test
public void testSimple() {
workitem = new ItemCollection();
workitem.model("ticket-workflow-1.0").task(1000).event(10);
workitem.replaceItemValue("_subject", "Hello World");
try {
workitem = workflowMockEnvironment.getWorkflowService().processWorkItem(workitem);
Assert.assertNotNull(workitem);
Assert.assertEquals(1100, workitem.getTaskID());
Assert.assertEquals("manfred", workitem.getItemValue("namowner", String.class));
} catch (AccessDeniedException | ProcessingErrorException | PluginException | ModelException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
Assert.fail();
}
}
The Imixs-Mock allows you to simulate different users processing a process instance. In this way you can verify the Access Control List (ACL) of a process instance and the assignment of process owners in complex workflow scenarios.
You will find the full example on Github.
In this short tutorial, I would like to show you how you can run a human cenctric workflow engine on Jakarta EE. Jakarta EE is the successor of Java EE and like the previous version, Jakarta EE offers you a full stack Java platform for enterprise applications. The Open Source Workflow Engine Imixs-Workflow is based on this platform from the early beginning of Java EE.
Imixs-Workflow provides you with a powerful, scalable and transactional workflow engine for Java Enterprise Applications. You can embedded the workflow engine in your Jakarta EE project or run the engine as a Microservice based on Jakarta EE.
The idea of the project is to move most of the usual business logic into a model. As a result you can change and optimize you application in a model driven way. The project supports the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN 2.0). BPMN enables you to describe your business process from different perspectives. You can describe the organizational aspects just to give people an understanding of your process. And you can as well model the technical details to execute your process with Imixs-Workflow engine. Continue reading “Tutorial: Imixs-Workflow and Jakarta EE”
Today we released our new Version 4.4 of Imixs-Workflow. The new release 4.4.0 includes new features, several bug fixes and minor enhancements of the Imixs-Workflow API.
The most important new feature is the Lucene Index which is now supporting transnational Read Committed. In the past, after a transaction was roll backed, in some situations the lucene index contains uncommitted entries, which leads to unexpected search results. With the new version 4.4 a complete re-implementation of the Lucene UpdateService has been realized. The indexer is now more robust and reflects only committed transactions.
Another new feature is the GenericSchedulerService. This new service interface can be used to implement custom schedulers. The implementation of such a scheduler is now quite easy and the scheduler is automatically managed by the new SchedulerService EJB. In the next releases we will re-implement also the existing WorkflowScheduler.
Read more about the project at: www.imixs.org. If you have suggestions or comments please contribute on Github.
The Imixs-Workflow project now supports the generation of SEPA files. The Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) is a payment-integration initiative of the European Union for simplification of bank transfers denominated in euro. Imixs-Workflow started the new adapter project Imixs-SEPA-Adapter to simplify the SEPA integration in any kind of finance workflow. The project provides a new scheduler service to generate SEPA files on a daily basis. For example this adapter can be used to export the results of an invoice approval process into a SEPA file which can be used in any payment software.
The Imixs-SEPA-Adapter is based on BPMN 2.0 and the Imixs-Report functionality to allows a free adaptability of the SEPA export to any custom workflow project. This adaptability is important because invoicing workflows differ from company to company. The adapter integrates seamlessly into an existing process and can be realized with a standard or a custom workflow mode based on the BPMN 2.0 standard.
The SEPA file generated by the adapter can be distributed into the task list of the companies finance team or sent via E-Mail notifications. For security reasons the distribution via the task list is recommended as this fully utilize the strict access concepts of Imixs-Workflow.
Detailed information about the adapter project can be found on Github. The project is in continuous development and contributions from the community are welcome at any time.
With the latest version of Imixs-Workflow we support now a consistency Lucene search index coupled with the Java EE container based transaction concept.
Writing a Lucene Index during a Java EE transaction, coupled to JPA database operations, it becomes quickly difficult to keep the Lucene index consistent. The reason is that a lucene index can become inconsistency if you write the lucene index within a long running Java transaction. In case the transaction fails lately, there is no way to roll back the already written lucene index automatically. This is different to the build-in roll-back functionality of a SQL database which is only writing new data in case the transaction succeeds. Also clients reading the index before a running transaction is closed will read uncommitted index data which will lead to wrong search results. Continue reading “Lucene Index Consistency”
Within the Imixs-Workflow project we started our first sample application based on the new Jakarta EE web framework MVC 1.0. The sample application demonstrates how an Imixs-Workflow application can be build with MVC 1.0.
The interesting thing here is that you only need a few lines of code to get the full functionality of a human-centric workflow engine. This is possible because in addition to the existing Jax-rs Rest API, the Imixs-Workflow engine provides services which can be easily adapted by the core concepts of an MVC-Application. Continue reading “First MVC 1.0 Workflow App”
With Office-DMS we introduce a new DMS solution for small and medium enterprises. DMS-Office is different from the usual DMS and archive solutions. Office-DMS connects documents and workflow and focus on the business process behind a document. The solution is based on the open source Workflow Platform Imixs-Workflow and offers a cost-effective alternative to license-chargeable DMS solutions.