Activiti Designer 5.9.0 released

[trademak]

Hi all,

I've released a new Activiti Designer version (5.9.0).
This is not just an upgrade with new features and bug fixes, we've also made a couple of changes to the core.
First, we don't have separate .activiti and bpmn20.xml files anymore. We now have one .bpmn file that contains the BPMN 2.0 XML information that's used to create a graphical diagram.
So any previous issues with the synchronization between the .activiti and the .bpmn20.xml file are gone.
Note that we changed the file extension to .bpmn. This has two reasons, first this is a default file extension for BPMN XML files. Second we need to have unique file extension for Activiti Designer diagrams, so .bpmn20.xml doesn't work, because this is seen as a XML file. To migrate your current diagrams to the new Activiti Designer release you only have to copy the .bpmn20.xml file and rename it to a .bpmn file. So actually there's no migration. Also note that this version of the Activiti Designer needs an Eclipse Indigo environment, so Helios is not supported.

Activiti Designer 5.9.0 highlights:

- Only one model file (with .bpmn extension), so no .activiti and .bpmn20.xml synchronization needed anymore.
- Support for nested sub processes.
- Support for signal events and event sub processes
- Improved the movement of boundary events and boundary events are now also moved with its parent.
- Upgrade to Graphiti 0.9.
- Lots of bug fixes.

So we welcome all users to try-out this new version of the Activiti Designer.
To get started copy one of your created .bpmn20.xml files to an Activiti project in the the new Activiti Designer and rename it with a .bpmn extension.
So you don't need the .activiti file at all.

For the next version we are looking at the implementation of the following features:

- Pools and lanes
- Text annotation
- Transaction and compensation support

But we welcome other requests for new features!

Best regards and enjoy,

[sebastian_s]

I appreciate the release of Activiti Designer 5.9 and I especially hope that any performance problems I was facing with the previous version will be gone. Thank you for your work on it.

Are there any plans to make the designer available on Eclipse Marketplace?

Regarding the future development: I am especially looking forward to the support for pools and lanes since they are an essential part of BPMN 2.0.

[rptmat57]

Hi,

Thanks for the question, because I didn't make that clear in my post.
We changed the file extension to .bpmn as I noted and the Activiti Engine will be able to deploy files with that extension from version 5.10.
But with version 5.9 this is not yet the case, so the process definition is not parsed and therefore ignored.
If you generate a unit test from the .bpmn file (right-click on the .bpmn file then choose Activiti - generate unit test) you can see how you can implement this without needing to change the file extension.

RepositoryService repositoryService = activitiRule.getRepositoryService();
repositoryService.createDeployment().addInputStream("process.bpmn20.xml",
    new FileInputStream(filename)).deploy();
So you can add the process definition file (the .bpmn file) as an input stream and use a filename with the .bpmn20.xml extension.
Then the file is deployed as it should be and you don't have to change the .bpmn file.

Best regards,

What about deploymentResources via Spring?
I changed the extension in my activiti-context file but I am getting this error:

java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.activiti.engine.impl.cmd.DeployCmd.deploymentsDiffer(DeployCmd.java:72)which correspond to this …if(!savedResource.isGenerated())…any idea?

[trademak]

Hi,

Can you create a test case that reproduces this error, then I can take a look at it.

Thanks,

[armijo]

Hi everyone,

I have been using Activity Designer 5.9.0 for a couple of days and I find it a great supporting tool.

Is it still possible to directly import BPMN 2.0 diagrams from Signavio Modeler, as in the previous version of the designer?

Best regards,
Alberto

[rptmat57]

Hi,

Can you create a test case that reproduces this error, then I can take a look at it.

Thanks,

It's not very easy to provide a test with all the spring configuration.

basically what I am using in my activiti-context.xml is this
<bean id="processEngineConfiguration" class="org.activiti.spring.SpringProcessEngineConfiguration">
  <property name="history" value="full" />
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager" />
<property name="databaseSchemaUpdate" value="true" />
<property name="mailServerHost" value="${app.pmsmail.server}" />
<property name="mailServerPort" value="25" />
<property name="jpaEntityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory" />
<property name="jpaHandleTransaction" value="true" />
<property name="jpaCloseEntityManager" value="true" />
<property name="jobExecutorActivate" value="false" />
<property name="deploymentResources">
  <list>
   <value>/diagrams/projectRoutingProcess/ProjectRoutingProcess.bpmn20.xml</value>
  </list>
</property>I renamed the file in my project, so I can use the new designer, and I changed the path accordingly <value>/diagrams/projectRoutingProcess/ProjectRoutingProcess.bpmn</value>that's when I got the exception

[dokmatik]

Hi,

changed my existing diagrams from .bpmn20.xml to bpmn.xml as well.
Unfortunately, automatic deployment of diagrams fails to process the given resources.
As I digged into org.activiti.engine.impl.bpmn.deployer.BpmnDeployer.deploy(…) the resources still are
checked against bpmn20.xml-suffix. So the default Deployer will skip the given resources unless suffixed with the previous ending.

Can you confirm this ?

What are my short-term options ?

a) Keep the "bpmn20.xml" ending and open and design them in Eclipse with 5.9 via the "Open With…" dialog instead a comfortable "double-click" - which by the way works.

b) Write my own Deployer ?

Cheers
dokmatik

Hi,

Can you create a test case that reproduces this error, then I can take a look at it.

Thanks,

It's not very easy to provide a test with all the spring configuration.

basically what I am using in my activiti-context.xml is this
<bean id="processEngineConfiguration" class="org.activiti.spring.SpringProcessEngineConfiguration">
  <property name="history" value="full" />
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
<property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager" />
<property name="databaseSchemaUpdate" value="true" />
<property name="mailServerHost" value="${app.pmsmail.server}" />
<property name="mailServerPort" value="25" />
<property name="jpaEntityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory" />
<property name="jpaHandleTransaction" value="true" />
<property name="jpaCloseEntityManager" value="true" />
<property name="jobExecutorActivate" value="false" />
<property name="deploymentResources">
  <list>
   <value>/diagrams/projectRoutingProcess/ProjectRoutingProcess.bpmn20.xml</value>
  </list>
</property>I renamed the file in my project, so I can use the new designer, and I changed the path accordingly <value>/diagrams/projectRoutingProcess/ProjectRoutingProcess.bpmn</value>that's when I got the exception

[trademak]

Hi,

In the current trunk of Activiti this is already implemented. So you don't have to write your own deployer.
Another solution could be to keep using .bpmn20.xml as the model file extension and use open with.

Best regards,

[maclab]

Hi
As Florian I think reverse-engineering from XML would be very helpful.
When do you think version with lanes and pools will be available ?
Thank

[vboulaye]

Hi,

Have you planned the support of the event based gateway in the next version of the designer ?

I am currently trying to evaluate this feature and the only way I have found to do it is to use the activiti-modeler (from signavio), but it does not seem to be really supported anymore (I had to patch the bpmn20.xml file manually to be able to load it in activiti-explorer).


Thanks& Regards,
Vincent

[steve1]

Hi,

Is custom extension not supproted yet in Activiti Designer 5.9?

When I open Activiti Designer 5.9 with Activiti Designer Extensions having my extension jars, below error is shown.

Could not open the editor: Can not initialize editor
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Argument cannot be null
at org.eclipse.swt.SWT.error(SWT.java:4263)
at org.eclipse.swt.SWT.error(SWT.java:4197)
at org.eclipse.swt.SWT.error(SWT.java:4168)
at org.eclipse.swt.graphics.ImageLoader.load(ImageLoader.java:128)
at org.eclipse.swt.graphics.ImageDataLoader.load(ImageDataLoader.java:22)
at org.eclipse.swt.graphics.ImageData.<init>(ImageData.java:331)
at org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Image.<init>(Image.java:545)
at org.activiti.designer.diagram.ActivitiToolBehaviorProvider.getPalette(ActivitiToolBehaviorProvider.java:505)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.internal.editor.GFPaletteRoot.updatePaletteEntries(GFPaletteRoot.java:104)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.internal.editor.GFPaletteRoot.<init>(GFPaletteRoot.java:80)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.editor.DefaultPaletteBehavior.createPaletteRoot(DefaultPaletteBehavior.java:103)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.editor.DefaultPaletteBehavior.getPaletteRoot(DefaultPaletteBehavior.java:115)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.editor.DiagramEditor.getPaletteRoot(DiagramEditor.java:822)
at org.eclipse.gef.ui.parts.GraphicalEditorWithFlyoutPalette.setEditDomain(GraphicalEditorWithFlyoutPalette.java:145)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.editor.DiagramEditor.setConfigurationProvider(DiagramEditor.java:1736)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.editor.DiagramEditor.setInput(DiagramEditor.java:492)
at org.activiti.designer.eclipse.editor.ActivitiDiagramEditor.setInput(ActivitiDiagramEditor.java:184)
at org.eclipse.gef.ui.parts.GraphicalEditor.init(GraphicalEditor.java:346)
at org.eclipse.graphiti.ui.editor.DiagramEditor.init(DiagramEditor.java:432)
at org.activiti.designer.eclipse.editor.ActivitiDiagramEditor.init(ActivitiDiagramEditor.java:132)
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.EditorManager.createSite(EditorManager.java:828)
…

I tried activiti-designer-integration 5.9 but it's not found.

Is there a method to use Activiti Designer 5.8?
The installation site http://activiti.org/designer/update/ always go to version 5.9, and can not get 5.8.

Thanks.