Developer friendly vs. raw BPMN 2.0

[chris_joelly]

Hello,

i am playing with Activity and the various tools and sometimes they drive me crazy
The naming scheme of the models is a trial and error thing till u figure out that naming
your models is best without blanks whenever a name field pops up, because the name
is used e.g. in the Maven POM file and thus had to follow the artefactId scheme of Maven.

Then, there is the developer friendly and raw BPMN 2.0 xml format. As i assume, because
i could not try myself till now, the raw format includes the "svg'able" definition of the
diagram. Unfortunately it is not so easy to merge the developer friendly format with the
diagram part from the raw format. If u think of using only the raw format then u run into
troubles with the unit tests when u want to deploy and test against the developer friendly
names… So, another mess

Why is there so a mix of this things? Is it possible to align the tool chain so that we

a) have one model
b) the one and only model contains the process definition as flow and diagram and
c) in a developer friendly way?

This would make things much easier… at least i think that would make the development
process a little easier, especially in the beginning…

Thanks

Chris

[bernd_ruecker]

Hi Chris.

The good news are: We are fully aware of these problems 😉 The bad answer is, that we still need some time to fix all these thing. Since it starts to get really more complicated with different tools, all using their own internal format and a lot of Ex- and Importing (where the importing currently doesn't work with none of the tools). But we try to make progress ASAP here. But the problem is, that these are different tools and especially the Activiti Modeler is a contribution from Signavio we as Activiti Team doesn't have under our own control (e.g. for using the developer friendly ID's internally).

We currently sketch a development approach with Cycle (see http://docs.codehaus.org/display/ACT/Process+authoring+story+boards#Processauthoringstoryboards-Defa...) and try to fully support that by cycle. Our current goal is end of march.

Cheers
Bernd

[chris_joelly]

Hello Bernd,

ok. this sounds good. But how will the final XML representation finally look like when u have no control
about the Activity Modeler? And when will the supported BPMN 2.0 elements be aligned between the
different tools? I just fetched version 0.7 of the Eclipse Designer and it only supports the very basic
BPMN 2.0 elements, whereas the modeler supports some more elements?

Chris

[jbarrez]

The Modeler supports all BPMN constructs, because the Modeler is meant to model processes, regardless if you want to execute them or not.
There is an 'activiti' pallette in the Modeler that limits the constructs to those supported by the Activiti engine.

The Designer however, is tailored towards developers. As such, it support only those constructs that are executable on the engine.

[chris_joelly]

I just installed 5.3 of the Activiti distribution and the Modeler does
not seem to have this 'activiti' palette anymore?

What does this mean? That Activiti is supporting all BPMN elements
by now?

[ronald_van_kuij]

I just installed 5.3 of the Activiti distribution and the Modeler does
not seem to have this 'activiti' palette anymore?

It indeed seems to have disappeared

What does this mean? That Activiti is supporting all BPMN elements
by now?

hahaha… You wish… No, sorry just seems the activiti pallet is gone…

[jbarrez]

I'll need to look into that, because I remember that I applied the patch needed to activate the palette.
I'll make sure to verify it for 5.4.

[chris_joelly]

hm…

so what is the recommended way to design processes with 5.3
or any upcoming release so that i can be sure that i dont use
elements which are not supported or that i use functionality
which might disappear in one release and i have to wait one
month till i can use it again. The thing is that i am working
on my thesis regarding BPMN2 and i wanted to use Activiti for
some processes which can be executed as well, but i have the
feeling that Activiti is in an early stage where things are very
unstable and even disappear in and new release.

Other way round: is there a list with all supported BPMN2
elements which can be used by the modeller AND the engine?

Chris

[jbarrez]

but i have the feeling that Activiti is in an early stage where things are very unstable and even disappear in and new release.

Activiti is stable as it gets. All API's defined since 5.0 are guaranteed not to change. If needed, we introduce backwards compatibility and deprecation strategies with clear documentation.

The issue you are referring to now is caused by an external code base on which we have little influence. Having a monthly release cycle, this is something that can happen. But I agree, we should have verified it - but it is a balancing act for every release.

is there a list with all supported BPMN2 elements which can be used by the modeller AND the engine

The userguide contains all constructs supported on the engine. Since the Modeler supports the whole of BPMN 2.0, there you have your list:
http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#bpmnConstructs

[bernd_ruecker]

Thanks Joram for answering the post. I couldn't have done better 🙂