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General J2EE: State of open source workflow engines

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  1. State of open source workflow engines (7 messages)

    So, allow me to query the collective knowledge and experience of TSS members and ask, where should one look to find the holy grail of open source workflow? What are the most promising open source workflow projects? Which are ready for prime time?
    My needs: I want to diagram a workflow (writing a definition file by hand is acceptable too) and have the engine manage the various participants. I really have only two types of participants: service (automated), or human. For services, just call the service and proceed with the flow. For human, add task to a task list. Allow me to display tasks to the human, allow the human to complete tasks, even pester the human if things are slipping. The workflow engine will need to pass domain information between steps and will need to make decisions based on information in domain data, or on information returned from a participant.
    Is open source workflow there yet? What are your experiences?

    Thanks in advance,
      Anodos
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    Threaded Messages (7)

  2. State of open source workflow engines[ Go to top ]

    OK, just to try and keep this thread from dying, does anyone have experience with OpenWFE (http://openwfe.sourceforge.net)? What is your assessment of its maturity?
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  3. State of open source workflow engines[ Go to top ]

    Hi Anodos,

    you should perhaps post your question on one of OpenWFE's forums : http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=54621

    I would say that OpenWFE is as advertised between beta and stable. It releases a lot but its interfaces are stable, changes are affecting its internal mostly.
    But my opinion doesn't count, I'm the project lead.

    If you post any questions in this thread about OpenWFE, I'll gladly answer them.

    Best regards,

    John
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  4. State of open source workflow engines[ Go to top ]

    I'm trying to evaluating workflow engines in order to decide upon a workflow engine to be embedded in a product.

    I'm currently looking at OpenWFE, jBPM and OSWorkflow.

    My main needs are:
    - It should store state info to a database
    - Should be able to retrieve user, role, permissions info from database / LDAP
    - Has a front-end that plugs-in to Eclipse for both authoring and client execution.

    OpenWFE seems to meet the needs, but it doesn't have an Eclipse plug-in as of now.

    jBPM has an eclipse plug-in but I read a review which doesn't recommend it highly ()

    OSWorkflow doesn't have an eclipse plug-in.

    Has anyone worked on these workflow engines earlier? If yes, please share your thoughts / experiences that help me to take a decision.
    Reply to this Reply to original

  5. Another option[ Go to top ]

    I am just starting to investigate this also and have come across a product from Intalio: http://www.intalio.com/products/workflow/ It sounds very compelling, and they have a great history with BPEL. They have submitted their code it seems to Apache and is in incubation at this time. I couldn't find out where to download it. But they do work with the Orbeon engine for AJAX forms on the F/E (open source) and there is an Eclipse plug-in that apparently works with it. http://www.eclipse.org/bpel/ I'm fairly new to this investigation (I want to see if I can use it for scientific purposes), but this seems like a compelling offering overall.
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  6. Yet another option[ Go to top ]

    I understand there are already a lot of options in terms of open-source workflow systems, but looking at your requirements, I think that a close match could be YAWL (http://www.yawl-system.org) since it has: - A graphical editor supporting the design of workflow models, not only in terms of the flow of activities, but also in terms of the data types for variables and documents, roles, resource allocation policies, etc. - It can natively handle both human tasks and tasks delegated to services (available through either HTTP or JMS). This is something that is difficult to find in open-source BPEL engines, because BPEL does not define a standard worklist service from which human tasks can be managed. Also, while YAWL started from an academic research project, it has now gained some maturity after significant input from user organizations (e.g. InterContinental Hotels and first:telecom) who have developed applications on top of YAWL. This is in contrast with other open-source tools which are driven either by one or two persons, or by a vendor.
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  7. correction[ Go to top ]

    In the previous posting, I got the URL wrong, it should be: http://www.yawl-system.com
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  8. Had the situation changed by now?[ Go to top ]

    Hello, had the situation changed by now? What are the most actively developed open-source workflow projects?
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