The Grails Activiti Evolution

[limcheekin]

Hi there,

I write about the future of the Grails Activiti I envisioned in this blog post at http://limcheekin.blogspot.com/2012/07/grails-activiti-evolution.html

I'd love to hear you comments!

Best regards,
Chee Kin

[ronald_van_kuij]

Well, if you want my honest opinion, the impression I got was that I was reading a piece from around 5 years old. It sounds Like you are proposing a business process suite. These are imo a failure with opensource minded people. At the same time I hear a 'desparate' call for 'attention' ( not sure if this is true, but that is my impression) But regarding the 5 points, I'll go into those a little deeper since they by temselves are interesting, howver in no way related to grails (nor should they be imo)

1: what has simulation to do with the usability of the explorer. 2 totally separate things.
1a) Simulation can be interesting, in the areas it is interesting for, I doubt Activiti is on the shortlist, so imo a good choice not to put attention to this from an Activiti point of view (it IS rather complicated)
1b) explorer ui: with the cdi extension and jsf, you can easily create any ui you want, so the explorer serves its purpose… Keep it simple for a quick demo…

2) define 'better' and why drools/open tablets and not smooks (in addition to…) for other kinds of services? Maybe rhe integration is not that difficult from a developer point of view (keep in mind that Activiti is meant for a joint effort between developers and business people (sme's).

3) same is true here as for 2. I use camel classes (not the esb it is incorporated in) to monitor folders, put files somewhere etc… Yes, it requires a little coding, but a repository of those kinds of service tasks would be much more interesting imo than tight integration with an esb. (there is a lot of overlap)

4) I use liferay and developed really simple portlets in jsf for tasklists etc. Works great if you know some things (developing portlets). If you do not know these things, you will not get the full advantage of a portal anyhow (and keep in mind that there is integration with liferay)

5) Good generic monitoring and reporting is difficult. Yes some default 'reports' could be included in the explorer and maybe in an api, but real reporting requires a reporting engine and designer (birt, pentaho) so if you need those, use those. But then again, which one to choose? People tat require reL reporting will go look for something and use it (we will in the not so distant future)

So all in all, Activiti should be what it is, a good BPM ENGINE, nothing more.

Cheers,

Ronald

[limcheekin]

Hi Ronald,

Great! Thanks for taking your valuable time to read my blog post and write a very detail response.

First of all, I have no doubt that Activiti is great process engine, I write the blog post is to discuss aspects of Activiti are short of and can be further improved as "Business Process Management (BPM) Platform targeted at business people, developers and system admins" as it claimed in the home page.

I discuss it in Grails Framework context is mainly it is the platform which the Grails Activiti plugin integrated, with objective to further simplifying workflow application development based on Activiti, like Grails simplified web app development in Java platform.

Please see my response to your point-by-point below:
1a) I thought the task list and form UI of Activiti Explorer is for process simulation, unless we agreed on this point we are discuss about different thing.
1b) I agreed that UI of Activiti Explorer served it purpose for process development team internally, but the admin-like interface is not impressive and convincing to business users and end users based on my consulting experience.

2) Thanks for pointing out smooks, it is not in the list simply because I am not aware it's existence. I will keep an eye on it. I picked drools/openl tablets is due to it support for decision table as most business users are expert of spreadsheet, it is great for rules editing. Yeah, rules integration might be not so difficult, but it can get easier.

3) Integration to ESB just a start, integration could be expand to other technologies such as Esper, Web Services, etc. Same here, it can get easier.

4) No doubt that you need to know JSR-168 and JSR-286 for Java portlet development, as I don't have experience in Grails portlets plugin, no comment how much simple to develop a Grails portlet. The Grails portlet may make use of existing Liferay Activiti Integration or using Grails Activiti plugin or both, can't comment now as I haven't explore there.

5) You are right! The idea is default reports. I will picked JasperReports as reporting engine due to familiarity. No doubt that customer still need customized reports, it is just matter of how simple for them or developer to create one.

Again, all items stated in the blog post and above are just idea and potential direction on how the Grails Activiti plugin can evolve and expand, how it goes is open for discussion and based on community and customer requirements.

Many thanks to your fruitful comments.

Best regards,
Chee Kin

[tjad]

Hi Chee Kin

The article you wrote is quite interesting. Though I am new to Activiti and workflow, I have quickly grown fond of using it.

In terms of the bullets in your blog, I am not familiar with most of the technologies you speak of, i did read up a bit on them and their concepts at the least will serve as a catalyst for getting Activiti aboard a companies ship. I have recently(over the last 2 years or so) witnessed how these points, especially reporting and the rules engine have a fairly large share in the deciding factor of which technologies will be used. Having Activiti be well integrated will be a benefit.

Enhancing the Activiti plugin for Grails is another great way to get Activiti out there as it seems that the Grails community is growing rapidly. While Activiti may be a great BPM Engine, it helps if you can utilize the engine easily. I was brought to the Activiti community via Grails, in fact through the Activiti plugin.  The more Activiti users, the better, right ?
The plugin is useful and really does help me get things done quickly. We are moving into a world of integrated systems.

This said, I am in hope that the Grails Activiti plugin takes on new growth.  That not only the Grails community, but the Activiti community too will contribute to the Grails plugins. The Activiti community knows best which features are awesome to have hooked up to your engine, so it would be nice if they could provide that insight.

Tjad