Packt Pub.j BPM.Developer.Guide.Dec.2009

• Copyright
• Credits
• About the Author
• About the Reviewers
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Why Developers Need BPM?
  • Business Process, why should I know about that?
    • "A sequence of tasks that happen in a repeatable order"
    • "executed by humans and/or systems"
    • "to achieve a business goal"
    • I know what BPs are, but what about the final "M" in BPM?
    • BPM stages
    • BPM stages in a real-life scenario
    • BPM improvements
      • Global understanding of our processes
      • Agile interaction between systems, people, and teams
      • Reduce paperwork
      • Real time process information
      • Process information analysis
      • Statistics and measures about each execution
    • BPM and system integration "history"
  • Some buzzwords that we are going to hear when people talk about BPM
    • Theoretical definitions
      • Integration (system integration)
      • Workflow
      • Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
      • Orchestration
    • Technological terms
      • Workflow
      • Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
      • BPEL (WS-BPEL)
  • Business Process Management Systems (BPMS), my tool and your tool from now on
    • BPM systems versus BPM suites
    • Why we really need to know BPM and BPMS, and how do they change/impact our daily life
    • New approach
    • Homework
  • Summary
• Chapter 2: jBPM for Developers
  • Graph Oriented Programming
  • Common development process
    • Database model
    • Business logic
    • User interfaces
  • Decoupling processes from our applications
  • Graph Oriented Programming on top of OOP
  • Implementing Graph Oriented Programming on top of the Java language (finally Java code!)
    • Modeling nodes in the object-oriented world
    • Modeling a transition in the object-oriented world
    • Expanding our language
    • Process Definition: a node container
  • Implementing our process definition
    • The Node concept in Java
    • The Transition concept in Java
    • The definition concept in Java
  • Testing our brand new classes
  • Process execution
  • Wait states versus automatic nodes
    • Asynchronous System Interactions
    • Human tasks
    • Creating the execution concept in Java
  • Homework
  • Creating a simple language
  • Nodes description
    • Stage one
    • Stage two
    • Stage three
  • Homework solution
  • Quick start guide to build Maven projects
  • Summary
• Chapter 3: Setting Up Our Tools
  • Background about the jBPM project
    • JBoss Drools
    • JBoss ESB
    • JBoss jBPM
      • Supported languages
      • Other modules
  • Tools and software
    • Maven—why do I need it?
      • Standard structure for all your projects
      • Centralized project and dependencies description
      • Maven installation
    • Installing MySQL
      • Downloading MySQL JConnector
    • Eclipse IDE
      • Install Maven support for Eclipse
    • SVN client
  • Starting with jBPM
    • Getting jBPM
      • From binary
      • From source code
  • jBPM structure
    • Core module
    • DB module
    • Distribution module
    • Enterprise module
    • Example module
    • Identity module
    • Simulation module
    • User Guide module
  • Building real world applications
    • Eclipse Plugin Project/GPD Introduction
      • GPD Project structure
      • Graphical Process Editor
      • Outcome
  • Maven project
  • Homework
  • Summary
• Chapter 4: jPDL Language
  • jPDL introduction
  • jPDL structure
  • Process structure
    • GraphElement information and behavior
    • NodeCollection methods
    • ProcessDefinition properties
    • Functional capabilities
      • Constructing a process definition
      • Adding custom behavior (actions)
  • Nodes inside our processes
    • ProcessDefinition parsing process
  • Base node
    • Information that we really need to know about each node
  • Node lifecycle (events)
    • Constructors
    • Managing transitions/relationships with other nodes
    • Runtime behavior
    • StartState: starting our processes
    • EndState: finishing our processes
    • State: wait for an external event
    • Decision: making automatic decisions
    • Transitions: joining all my nodes
    • Executing our processes
  • Summary
• Chapter 5: Getting Hands Dirty with jPDL
  • How is this example structured?
  • Key points that you need to remember
  • Analyzing business requirements
    • Business requirements
    • Analyzing the proposed formal definition
    • Refactoring our previously defined process
  • Describing how the job position is requested
  • Environment possibilities
    • Standalone application with jBPM embedded
    • Web application with jBPM dependency
  • Running the recruiting example
    • Running our process without using any services
      • Normal flow test
  • Summary
• Chapter 6: Persistence
  • Why do we need persistence?
    • Disambiguate an old myth
    • Framework/process interaction
    • Process and database perspective
    • Different tasks, different sessions
    • Configuring the persistence service
    • How is the framework configured at runtime?
    • Configuring transactions
      • User Managed Transactions (UMT)
      • What changes if we decide to use CMT?
    • Some Hibernate configurations that can help you
    • Hibernate caching strategies
    • Two examples and two scenarios
      • Running the example in EJB3 mode
  • Summary
• Chapter 7: Human Tasks
  • Introduction
  • What is a task?
  • Task management module
    • Handling human tasks in jBPM
    • Task node and task behavior
      • TaskNode.java
      • Task.java
      • TaskInstance.java
  • Task node example
    • Business scenario
      • Assigning humans to tasks
    • Managing our tasks
      • Real-life scenario
      • Users and tasks interaction model
  • Practical example
    • Setting up the environment (in the Administrator Screen)
    • It's time to work
      • userScreen.jsp
      • UserScreenController.java
      • taskCheckDeviceForm.jsp
      • TaskFormController.java
  • Summary
• Chapter 8 : Persistence and Human Tasks in the Real World
  • Adding persistence configuration
    • Using our new configurations
    • Safe points
    • Advantages of persisting our process during wait states
    • Persistence in the Recruiting Process example
  • Human tasks in our Recruiting Process
    • Modifying our process definitions
    • Analyzing which nodes will change
    • Modified process definitions
    • Variable mappings
    • Task assignments
      • Assignments in the Recruiting Process example
  • Summary
• Chapter 9: Handling Information
  • Handling information in jBPM
    • Two simple approaches to handle information
  • Handling process variables through the API
    • ContextInstance proposed APIs
    • ExecutionContext proposed APIs
    • Telephone company example
    • Storing primitive types as process variables
  • How and where is all this contextual information stored?
    • How are the process variables persisted?
    • Understanding the process information
      • Types of information
      • Variables hierarchy
      • Accessing variables
    • Testing our PhoneLineProcess example
      • Storing Hibernate entities variables
  • Homework
  • Summary
• Chapter 10: Going Deeply into the Advanced Features of jPDL
  • Why do we need more nodes?
    • Fork/join nodes
      • The fork node
      • The join node
    • Modeling behavior
    • Super state node
      • Phase-to-node interaction
      • Node in a phase-to-phase interaction
      • Node-to-node interaction between phases
      • Complex situations with super state nodes
      • Navigation
    • Process state node
      • Mapping strategies
    • The e-mail node
  • Advanced configurations in jPDL
    • Starting a process instance with a human task
    • Reusing actions, decisions, and assignment handlers
      • Properties
      • Bean
      • Constructor
      • Compatibility
  • Summary
• Chapter 11: Advanced Topics in Practice
  • Breaking our recruiting process into phases
  • Keeping our process goal focused with process state nodes
    • What exactly does this change mean?
    • Sharing information between processes
      • Create WorkStation binding
  • Asynchronous executions
    • Synchronous way of executing things
    • The asynchronous approach
      • How does this asynchronous approach work?
    • What happens if our server crashes?
    • Configuring and starting the asynchronous JobExecutor service
    • Different situations where asynchronous nodes can be placed
  • Summary
• Chapter 12: Going Enterprise
  • jBPM configurations for Java EE environments
  • JBoss Application Server data source configurations
    • Taking advantage of the JTA capabilities in JBoss
    • Enterprise components architecture
    • The CommandServiceBean
  • JobExecutor service
    • JobExecutor service for Java EE environments
  • Timers and reminders
    • Mail service
    • Calendar
    • Timers
    • How do the timers and reminders work?
  • Summary
• Index