soap-http-connector for Activiti Designer

[b_schnarr]

Hello at all,

one of the most important tasks of a BPM engine is the orchestration of SOAP web services. Currently, this can be done using a Java Service Task and Apache CXF. But nevertheless, this requires deeping into Java coding. The alternative, the Web Service Task, requires writing plain XML. Both approaches are error-prone.

I found a very nice open source approach for consuming a soap service without any coding. Since all of this code is open source, it could be merged with Activiti very easily. Please take a look at this: https://github.com/camunda/camunda-bpm-examples/tree/master/servicetask/soap-service

You only have to define input and output parameters in the GUI. No XML and no Java coding. Here is a picture of the designer-integration:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0yqxoh6e5dqe585/soap_in_designer.jpg?dl=0

I attached a working sample process from here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/camunda/camunda-bpm-examples/master/servicetask/soap-service/src/m...

This is a very elegant way of consuming a soap service. Since this is a key feature of a BPM engine, it should be simplyfied like shown in my example.

What do you think? Is there a chance that this finds the way into the Activiti BPM Suite?

Best regards
Ben

[b_schnarr]

The same is true for rest: https://github.com/camunda/camunda-bpm-examples/tree/master/servicetask/rest-service

Those two extensions would simplify the consumption of web services a lot.

[trademak]

Hi Ben,

I agree that there's a lot of room for improvement in this area.
Just copying what another engine has implemented is however not our approach.
There are some good things in there, so it's definitely something we can work on.
Would you be willing to invest development time in this as well?
When you were referring to the Activiti BPM suite, were you referring to the commercial offering or the open source project?
In the commercial offering we do have support for consuming REST services in some places already.

Best regards,

[b_schnarr]

Hi Tijs,
I refer to the open source project. Are there already plans to improve the current consuming functionalities of web services? Especially the consumption of SOAP services needs to be improved in terms of a non-coding solution.
If there is already some code for rest services in the commercial offering, is there a chance that this finds the way in the open source project?

Best regards
Ben

[trademak]

Hi Ben,

Ok. Yes we want to improve the SOAP support, but we do need the community to make this happen together with the Activiti core developers. So we would be looking for people that want to invest time in designing the implementation together with us and also doing development work.

The REST support code in the commercial offering will find its way to the open source project, but we have not yet determined when and how.

Best regards,