Planing to upgrade Activiti 5.15, which is the latest stable one 6 or 7 ?

[jdp]

Hi,

Currently we are using Activiti 5.15 version with multiple instances/Activiti engines. Now we are planning to upgrade Activiti version to the latest stable one as there are lots of improvement has been done since then. I have searched and found that the Activiti 6.0 is the stable one but 7 is also released. Can any one please advice which one is more stable,  which I can go for ?

Thanks,

Paresh

[pault]

I'm currently looking at porting some development work to 6 & 7. Couldn't comment on stability, but in terms of code migration it appears 5 to 6 is relatively straight forward. The move to 7 can be more involved, based on the questions and comments I've seen on the forum, perhaps not surprising given version 7 adopts cloud native concepts and a new architecture.   

[jdp]

Thank you for your reply PaulT.

Can anybody share your feedback about Activiti 7 in case you had migrated from older Activiti version to 7. I am still confused about which version should I pick to upgrade, Activiti 5.15 to 6 or 7 ?

Thanks,

PM

[jdp]

Hi,

Finally we have decided to upgrade Activiti 7.0.0.GA : Release 7.0.0.GA · Activiti/Activiti · GitHub 

Seems this is the latest stable version of Activiti series 7.

Can anybody provide expert advice on this ?

Also, I did not find any ready to run package for this version to evaluate it. I would appreciate if anyone can direct me to get that link.

Thanks,

PM

[paul_roth]

Paresh Modi‌ - thanks for going with Activiti 7! 

• re: expert advice - it may be best to start asking the questions you have and let's see if can answer them within the community. 
• re: ready to run package - the place to get started is here.  There are Jenkins X Quick Starts available for EKS, AKS, and GKE. What is your target Kubernetes environment?  

[jdp]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the suggestion.

Actually we are not using cloud based architecture. We have integrated Activiti engine within our Spring based micro service and we are planing to go ahead with same environment with code base of latest Activiti 7 version along with latest modeler app to design workflows.

However few components are not supported yet in Activiti 7 like Timer & Boundary Timer and there are already running workflows in our platform with these components, so how can we manage it. 

Seems Activiti 7 is still under development and not mature enough to use for production environment.

Do you have any suggestions/advice for the same ?

Thanks,

PM

[salaboy]

Hi Paresh,

Activiti 7 is composed by Activiti Core and Activiti Cloud. We are putting all the community effort on the cloud approach. There is no pre made package to evaluate or run, mostly because we are focusing on production ready building blocks instead of a demo app. Having said that, you can still use the libraries (if you embedded activiti in your spring microservices), we have done some work on Activiti Core 7 to make sure that the library aligns with Spring Boot 2.x and for that reason things such as security is now handled fully by Spring. 

Regarding migration, it for our 7.0.0 release we focused in the new shape of the Java APIs, making sure that there is a seamless transition to the cloud approach, this means that you have still access to the OLD 6.x APIs. 

Regarding the Activiti Modeler app that we are building, is focused also in the cloud approach, that means that the BPMN elements that are enabled to be used are the ones that are fully supported by Activiti Cloud. If you are planning to work with Activiti Core, you should be fine by using the Activiti 6.x app to model your processes. 

Hope this helps. 

[jdp]

Hi Salatino,

Thank you for your reply, it is really helpful.

I would appreciate if you can answer few queries below and help us to finalize approach for Activiti framework upgrade:

1. From your response what I concluded, Activiti 7 cloud is not useful for us as we are not using cloud based architecture, right ?

2. So in this case, we are planing to upgrade back-end code base with Activiti 7 Core libraries and will continue using same modeler app of 5.15.  Definitions designed by Activiti 5.15 will work with Activiti 7 Core libraries ? and also same for already running workflows ?

3. However in basic analysis of code, we have found that few classes are not available in Activiti 7 Core libraries which we had used from Activiti 5.15. How can we manage usage of these classes ?

org.activiti.engine.impl.el.Expression

org.activiti.engine.impl.jobexecutor.JobExecutor

org.activiti.engine.impl.jobexecutor.MessageAddedNotification

org.activiti.rest.common.api.ActivitiUtil

org.activiti.engine.impl.persistence.entity.TimerEntity

org.activiti.engine.FormService

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ModelRequest

org.activiti.rest.common.api.SecuredResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.BaseModelResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskBaseResource

org.activiti.engine.form.FormProperty

org.activiti.engine.form.TaskFormData

org.activiti.engine.impl.form.EnumFormType

org.activiti.rest.service.api.RestResponseFactory

org.activiti.rest.service.api.engine.variable.RestVariable

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.process.BaseProcessInstanceResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.process.ProcessInstanceCreateRequest

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.process.ProcessInstanceResponse

org.activiti.rest.service.application.ActivitiRestServicesApplication

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.DeploymentResource

org.activiti.engine.impl.pvm.PvmTransition

org.activiti.engine.impl.pvm.process.ActivityImpl

org.activiti.engine.impl.pvm.process.TransitionImpl

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ModelResponse

org.activiti.rest.service.application.ActivitiRestServicesApplication

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.BaseModelResource

org.activiti.rest.editor.main.EditorRestResource

org.activiti.rest.editor.main.PluginRestResource

org.activiti.rest.editor.main.StencilsetRestResource

org.activiti.rest.common.api.DefaultResource

org.activiti.rest.common.filter.JsonpFilter

org.activiti.rest.diagram.application.DiagramServicesInit

org.activiti.rest.editor.application.ModelerServicesInit

org.activiti.rest.diagram.services.ProcessDefinitionDiagramLayoutResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.form.FormDataResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.DeploymentResourceCollectionResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.DeploymentResourceDataResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.DeploymentResourceResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ModelSourceExtraResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ModelSourceResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ProcessDefinitionModelResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ProcessDefinitionResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.repository.ProcessDefinitionResourceDataResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.process.ExecutionCollectionResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.process.ExecutionResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.process.ProcessInstanceResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskIdentityLinkCollectionResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskIdentityLinkFamilyResource

org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskResource

org.activiti.rest.common.filter.RestAuthenticator

Thanks,

PM

[salaboy]

Answers to your questions

1) If you are not ready for cloud, that is fine, you might want to migrate to 6.x then and then to 7.x. There was a big change between 5.x and 6.x but a lot of people when through that migration. 7.X is based on 6.x so you will face the some of the similar challenges. 

2) Same.. you need to look first at migrating at 6.x 

3) Rest Endpoints are not provided by the core library anymore.. because it is a core library, you can use Spring to expose the endpoints that you need.. Right now Endpoints are only provided in the cloud approach. 

[jdp]

Hi All,

After analysis and internal testing we got to know that Activiti 7.0 does not support running workflows of Activiti 5.15. So will check for 5.15 to 6.0 first.