topic Re: BPMN Compliance in Alfresco Archive

BPMN Compliance

jackmanbob — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 22:07:30 GMT

Forgive me if this is one of those questions that has been covered a thousand times. I honestly searched for the answer before posting here.I understand that Activiti is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but I wonder if it is only BPMN 2.0? What I mean is, does Activiti add their own flavor to the BPMN standard?W

Re: BPMN Compliance

jackmanbob — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:34:44 GMT

Bump

Re: BPMN Compliance

jackmanbob — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:08:18 GMT

Bump. Really? No one?

Re: BPMN Compliance

trademak — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:42:33 GMT

Hi,

Activiti supports the common used elements of the BPMN 2.0 specification. The supported elements are described in the user guide.
Because we support BPMN 2.0 XML, you can use the process definitions in every BPMN 2.0 compliant process engine.
In addition to the BPMN 2.0 specification we have a couple of Activiti specific extensions, which are also described in the user guide.

Best regards,

Re: BPMN Compliance

jackmanbob — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 22:48:54 GMT

Thank you for the reply if we use the Activiti-specific extensions, is there a way to convert/export to BPMN compliance? Or are the Activiti extensions purely for Activiti?

Re: BPMN Compliance

falko_menge — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:57:24 GMT

All of Activiti's BPMN extensions are compliant to the BPMN specification, because they use the extension mechanism officially defined by the standard. So the question remains if you can use models with those extension in other BPMN modeling tools or engines.

The short answer is yes, because all BPMN compliant tools must be able to deal with arbitrary extensions. However, if the targeted tool or engine does not understand an extension made by Activiti, one has to replace that extension either with constructs that only rely on features defined in BPMN itself or with an extension that provides similar features.

Some of Activiti's BPMN extensions are just shortcuts for BPMN constructs that require too much boilerplate XML code. Those could be easily converted to a syntax that relies only features defined in BPMN itself, e.g., using XSLT.

Other extensions are specific to using BPMN with Java. Those are needed, because BPMN only specifies a binding to XML and Web Services. It could be possible to port them to other Java-based BPMN engines.

Re: BPMN Compliance

jackmanbob — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:28:31 GMT

All of Activiti's BPMN extensions are compliant to the BPMN specification, because they use the extension mechanism officially defined by the standard. So the question remains if you can use models with those extension in other BPMN modeling tools or engines.

The short answer is yes, because all BPMN compliant tools must be able to deal with arbitrary extensions. However, if the targeted tool or engine does not understand an extension made by Activiti, one has to replace that extension either with constructs that only rely on features defined in BPMN itself or with an extension that provides similar features.

Some of Activiti's BPMN extensions are just shortcuts for BPMN constructs that require too much boilerplate XML code. Those could be easily converted to a syntax that relies only features defined in BPMN itself, e.g., using XSLT.

Other extensions are specific to using BPMN with Java. Those are needed, because BPMN only specifies a binding to XML and Web Services. It could be possible to port them to other Java-based BPMN engines.

Excellent response! Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!

…Some of Activiti's BPMN extensions are just shortcuts for BPMN constructs that require too much boilerplate XML code. Those could be easily converted to a syntax that relies only features defined in BPMN itself, e.g., using XSLT…

Does Activiti (maybe in ActivitiModeler UI), have functionality to do this for me? Or is it up to me to become a BPMN 2.0 expert on the XML level in order to create my own XSLT?

Re: BPMN Compliance

ronald_van_kuij — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:43:43 GMT

…Some of Activiti's BPMN extensions are just shortcuts for BPMN constructs that require too much boilerplate XML code. Those could be easily converted to a syntax that relies only features defined in BPMN itself, e.g., using XSLT…
Does Activiti (maybe in ActivitiModeler UI), have functionality to do this for me? Or is it up to me to become a BPMN 2.0 expert on the XML level in order to create my own XSLT?

Nope, nothing available in the moderler (does not even support the extensions at all) and nothing in the explorer. So for the time being it is indeed up to you to become an expert in that area (and contribute :-))

Re: BPMN Compliance

ghollins — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 23:22:16 GMT

Hi,

With regards to the Designer (eclipse plugin) producing BPMN 2.0 compliant XML, I have a question. I've noticed that gateways are lacking the "gatewayDirection" attribute. I may be misinterpreting the BPMN 2.0 OMG specification, but it seems like this is a required attribute.

Here is an example of an exclusiveGateway XML tag that Designer produced:

<code>
<exclusiveGateway id="exclusivegateway1" name="Exclusive Gateway"></exclusiveGateway>
</code>
Are there claims that Designer will produce BPMN 2.0 compliant/conformant XML, or is it more tailored towards producing XML that will work with the Activiti engine?

Thanks!

Re: BPMN Compliance

geostp — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 09:53:33 GMT

Hi ,

Does the latest version of Activiti is fully BPMN 2.0 compliant. Is there any documentation available which tables down comparative study
of BPMN2.0 notation not supported in Activiti and jBPM with latest version of the software.

Re: BPMN Compliance

jbarrez — Tue, 19 Aug 2014 08:47:33 GMT

No, Activiti is not 'fully' compliant. There are comnstructs which we don't implement.
All supported constructs are listed in the user guide in the BPMN section.