The Cycle of a Process

[ptriller]

Hi,

I was wondering how a real development cycle for Processes is supposed to work.
Creating Workflows in the activiti-modeler works great,
then exporting them for the developer works, too, but then I have a problem

I enhance the Process working with the xml, since the activiti-designer is not yet in a
productive ready state (at least the version I have).

But now I have a problem. How is it supposed to work when the process needs to be
adjusted ?
Do I have to make the changes directly in the XML ?
That is not really practical, all model driven developments are pretty much a hinderance if there is no full cycle possible.

Is this already implemented and I am only missing something, is this planned in the near future ?

I have to make a demo to my bosses until friday, so I have to choose a bpmn framework and setup a demonstration,
without a semi working development cycle I probably have to choose a different Framework, although from a
programming perspective I really like activiti the most.

[bernd_ruecker]

Hi ptriller.

You are right, currently the cycle within cycle is not yet working completely (but keep in mind Activiti is a pretty young project). We are indeed working hard on improving this and support a whole roundtrip (see http://docs.codehaus.org/display/ACT/Process+authoring+story+boards#Processauthoringstoryboards-Defa... for more in depth details). But this will still take some time, I think we will not make it into the 5.3, I hope the 5.4.

And then, there is still one issue missing: The Activiti Modeler cannot import existing BPMN 2.0 XML. The enterprise version of Signavio is able to do this (and this is how we test it), but Signavio wants to keep this feature part of an up-selling strategy. We have defined a stripped down commercial Signavio edition which contains that feature as well. But sooner or later we expect it top get open source or to be reimplemented by the community.

The Activiti Designer improves a lot every release, so that should get better every day. Currently you have to jump to the XML here and there, true, but that's as well a matter of time. I just cannot promise how much time we need…

Hope that helps!

Cheers
Bernd