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Manage your business processes with JBoss jBPM

Get started using JBoss's business process management tool

By Jeff Hanson, JavaWorld.com, 05/22/06

Enterprises have searched diligently for a structured approach for designing business actions/transactions and executing them preferably using automated processes. Business process management (BPM) and workflow management offer a solution to this problem using concepts such as actions, tasks, and flows.

This article introduces BPM and discusses techniques and tools to empower enterprise systems with BPM and workflow management using JBoss jBPM.

The term business process management typically refers to a set of activities enterprises can employ to automate and optimize business processes in a manner adaptable to dynamically changing environments. These activities usually seek help from software engineering and tools; therefore, the term BPM is often used directly to refer to the engineering techniques and tools.

BPM is embodied in three distinct practices:

1. Process design: The task of designing existing and new processes
2. Process execution: The execution of an automated sequence of related events involving software processes and/or human activities
3. Process monitoring: Observance and auditing of the state of individual processes so that the statistics and performance of these processes can be recorded, reported, and optimized

BPM seeks to allow software engineers to share the same concepts and frameworks as business analysts; consequentially, software vendors have attempted to create tools that will allow enterprises to capture, design, and optimize business processes through the employment of graphical modeling tools, domain-specific languages, and proprietary applications.

JBoss jBPM 3.0 delivers the capability of developing new automated business processes and workflows with industry-standard orchestration using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), a flexible and pluggable API, a native process definition language, and a graphical modeling tool.

JBoss jBPM is an open source (LGPL license) framework of Java APIs, tools, and a definition language that can operate as a Web application or a standalone Java application. JBoss jBPM acts as an intermediary between business analysts and developers by giving them a common process definition language referred to as jPDL.

Overview of the JBoss jBPM architecture

JBoss jBPM defines process definitions within files written using the JBoss process definition language. jPDL is a graphic-oriented programming (GOP) language based on a model of nodes, transitions, and actions. In this model, nodes are commands executed as they are encountered during the flow of a process definition. Transitions direct the flow of execution of a process definition, and actions perform specific logic as a node or transition event occurs.

In jBPM, process definitions are packaged as process archives. A process archive is passed to the jPDL process engine for execution. The jPDL process engine traverses a process graph, executes defined actions, maintains process state, and logs all process events.

JBoss jBPM is encapsulated within the following components: