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Activiti Eclipse Designer Vs Web Modeler

gs76pl
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making
hi,

i've just installed both web & eclipse version of activiti and have some question:
1. Why is eclipse plugin so limited in its functionality (2 gateway tasks, 7 different tasks, Start & Stop Task) as oppose to the web modeler (here one can find at least 2x, 3x more components and different parameters)?
2. If the Web Modeler is a way to go than where can i find saved file with my process? How can i make a deployable jar for activity-probe? How can i generate forms for human tasks?
3. Is it possible to read the process crated in modeler in the eclipse? I tried to do that with activity examples but could not do that because eclpse plugin reads .activity file and generates .bpmn20.xml and in this case I have .bpmn20.xml and don't have .activity?

regards
5 REPLIES 5

ronald_van_kuij
Champ on-the-rise
Champ on-the-rise
1. Why is eclipse plugin so limited in its functionality (2 gateway tasks, 7 different tasks, Start & Stop Task) as oppose to the web modeler (here one can find at least 2x, 3x more components and different parameters)?
because the modeler started  almost 3 years ago, the designer only 6 months
2. If the Web Modeler is a way to go than where can i find saved file with my process? How can i make a deployable jar for activity-probe?
afaik, you can't at the moment. Might be that activiti cycle can play a role here or use the import in the designer. Will check that for you
How can i generate forms for human tasks?
generate? You can't. Create them by hand, it is not that hard.
3. Is it possible to read the process crated in modeler in the eclipse? I tried to do that with activity examples but could not do that because eclpse plugin reads .activity file and generates .bpmn20.xml and in this case I have .bpmn20.xml and don't have .activity?
If you read the announcements of Activiti 5.2, you'd see that you can import them using the 0.7 version of the designer. But keep in mind that the modeleler supoorts more than the engine can handle and the designer less. So importing things that are not supported by the designer leads to unpredictable results (as can be read in other posts in this forum)


regards

gs76pl
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making
1. Why is eclipse plugin so limited in its functionality (2 gateway tasks, 7 different tasks, Start & Stop Task) as oppose to the web modeler (here one can find at least 2x, 3x more components and different parameters)?
because the modeler started  almost 3 years ago, the designer only 6 months
2. If the Web Modeler is a way to go than where can i find saved file with my process? How can i make a deployable jar for activity-probe?
afaik, you can't at the moment. Might be that activiti cycle can play a role here or use the import in the designer. Will check that for you

what do you mean that i can't? does it mean that process can't be exported/accessed? how am i supposed to use it then? (e.g. start process from a java code,.. i need to pass .bpmn2.xml file to the api?)
How can i generate forms for human tasks?
generate? You can't. Create them by hand, it is not that hard.

ok, i can't write some html no problem but it would be nice to be able to generate these pages the same way jbpm3 designer could do that
3. Is it possible to read the process crated in modeler in the eclipse? I tried to do that with activity examples but could not do that because eclpse plugin reads .activity file and generates .bpmn20.xml and in this case I have .bpmn20.xml and don't have .activity?
If you read the announcements of Activiti 5.2, you'd see that you can import them using the 0.7 version of the designer. But keep in mind that the modeleler supoorts more than the engine can handle and the designer less. So importing things that are not supported by the designer leads to unpredictable results (as can be read in other posts in this forum)

so to make the story short one should be very cautious while working with modeler as it creates nodes/tasks/etc that are not recognized by the engine and probably the safer approach would be using eclipse xml editor and schema file just to make sure that whatever gets written won't cause the engine to fail?

regards

ronald_van_kuij
Champ on-the-rise
Champ on-the-rise
what do you mean that i can't? does it mean that process can't be exported/accessed? how am i supposed to use it then? (e.g. start process from a java code,.. i need to pass .bpmn2.xml file to the api?)
In other parts of my remarks (they might not have been that clear) I stated that you can import them in the designer now and use that do create a bar (not jar) file. What I meant in here is that yout cannot deploy them from, or create jar (you probably meant bar) files in the modeler directly.

ok, i can't write some html no problem but it would be nice to be able to generate these pages the same way jbpm3 designer could do that
I've worked a lot with jBPM3 and the 'form designer' was very limited. Way to limited for good usage. In Activiti you can edit form properties, currently only in the xml afaik, have to check this for 0.7 of the designer, and in a not to distant release, this can be used to runtime generate a form (so even *less* work than with jBPM3) for at least to web ui solutions (I think the current form language and for JSF for sure). Still these forms are imo in most cases to limited and we almost always created forms in the application itself since it was not that much more work and gave us a lot of flexibility to integrate with domain models etc…

so to make the story short one should be very cautious while working with modeler as it creates nodes/tasks/etc that are not recognized by the engine and probably the safer approach would be using eclipse xml editor and schema file just to make sure that whatever gets written won't cause the engine to fail?

Well, yes and no… Look at http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/ACT-309. A 'limited view' is being worked on for the modeler, so you will only see those elements supported by the engine so you will be on the safe side.

trademak
Star Contributor
Star Contributor
Hi,

My view on your initial questions:

1. The approach of the Designer is to support the functionality of the Activiti Engine. The Modeler supports the BPMN 2.0 specification, so the broad pallette. In the current version of the Designer (0.7.0) we support most Engine functionality except for the event handling (which we'll add in the next release).
2. The processes modeled in the Modeler are by default available in the workspace/activiti-modeler-examples dir in your Activiti installation. There you can also find the bpmn 2.0 XML. There is an Ant task available to create a BAR file from a bpmn 2.0 XML, but you can also deploy the XML directly to the Engine with Probe.
3. Yes in version 0.7.0 of the Designer you can import a BPMN 2.0 XML from the modeler. So you can find the BPMN 2.0 XML file in the workspace/activiti-modeler-examples dir and you can import it in an Activiti project by right-clicking on the Activiti project in Eclipse and choosing for import at the bottom of the menu. Make sure you have a BPMN 2.0 XML which contains supported elements, because the Designer can only import elements from the supported pallette.

Best regards,

mproch
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making
Well, yes and no… Look at http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/ACT-309. A 'limited view' is being worked on for the modeler, so you will only see those elements supported by the engine so you will be on the safe side.
I think limited view is currently available (it contains shapes available in engine, not in designer though). To enable it you just have to select appropriate shape repository (currently there is BPMN 2.0 full set and activiti ones).
The functionality that is not (yet) available is being able to define activiti extension elements, such as formKey and disabling properties not supported by engine