Product Strategy for Modelling of executable processes

[uweheuer]

Hi,
reading MEAP version of 'Activiti in Action', press arcticles and forum topics I am still not sure what is the strategy related to 'modelling executable processes'. My understanding is:

You can only use Activiti Modeler for modelling executable processes if you restrict to BPMN 2.0 elements which are supported by the Activiti process engine and Activiti Designer.

There is no support by Activiti Modeler to keep this restriction.

In practice that means that Modeler is used for discussion with the business and for process documenation and Designer is used for process implementation. There is no reuse of the process model in either direction. This is more or less the situation for commercial products.

My questions are:
- Will Designer eventually replace Modeler or vice versa or what will be intention to have two tools?
- Is the further Development of Modeler synchronized with the Activiti project (e.g. Oryx has a jBPM integration, Signavio marketed as documentation solution only)?
- Is there a plan that Cycle will bridge the gap?

Kind regards,
Uwe.

[trademak]

Hi Uwe,

In the Activiti Modeler you have the possibility to restrict the palette to only the Activiti-supported BPMN 2.0 elements.
If you want to use Java classes in your proces model, for example in a service task or with a execution or task listener the Designer is the best way to go.
We have support to import BPMN 2.0 models from the Activiti Modeler into the Designer. And I know the commercial Signavio Modeler also supports importing a BPMN 2.0 XML back into the Modeler.

To answer your questions
- No the Designer will not replace the Modeler or vice versa. The Modeler will be the web-based modeling environment where you can model all non-Java stuff. The Designer is the development tool where you can add Java classes and built your own extensions. Also the Designer provides unit testing and deployment generation capabilities.
- At the moment there's no further development of the Modeler. Although the Oryx project (which is also the foundation for the Activiti Modeler) is still developed, we don't merge back changes from there at the moment.
- Cycle will certainly provide support for this kind of stuff. Camunda leads that component, so it would be best if they can answer your question.

Best regards,

[jakob_freund]

Hi Uwe,

yes it is Cycle's job to bridge that gap, however it is not an easy one, as you can imagine 😉

Also there are different strategies for doing so. The first and rather simple one is already implemented and described here:

http://www.bpm-guide.de/2011/03/22/the-bpm-roundtrip-with-activiti-cycle/

However there is still a lot of work to do, and we have scheduled a couple of Sprints for July/August, so hopefully in September we can present the next stage of Business-It-Alignment with cycle.

cheers Jakob