Main | Next page »

Installationsanleitung Liferay mit Tomcat auf Windows

Heutzutage ist der schnelle Zugang zu Informationen sehr wichtig, alles muss schnellst möglich gehen. Ein Portal wie das OpenSource Projekt Liferay ermöglicht es sehr gut, sich seine wichtigen Apps zentral an einer Stelle zu sammeln. Natürlich gehören dazu auch Anträge und Aufgaben- / Statuslisten, also Workflowkomponenten oder Neudeutsch BPM. In einer Folge von Artikel werden wir beschreiben, wie aus Liferay und dem Imixs Workflow eine schnelle und effiziente Plattform für Geschäftsprozess Management gebaut werden kann. Im ersten Teil beschreiben wir die Installation von Liferay im Bundle mit Tomcat auf einem Windowsrechner
[Read More]

BPM solutions using Java EE

The Imixs Workflow project is an open source project that relieved the construction of business process management systems (BPMS). An essential part of the project are the Imixs JEE Workflow components. These components can be used to build BPM solutions based on the Java EE plattform.

The following tutorial will show how an Imixs BPM solution can be created in a few minutes with the help of Eclipse, Maven and Glassfish Application Server.

[Read More]

Modeler Help updated!

The Imixs Modeler Documentation is updated and some addtional Informations about the usage were added to the site. The Imixs Workflow Modeler is a good starting point to begin a BPM Project. 

 

Read more about the Eclipse based Modeling Tool from the Imixs Workflow project.

 

Switching JDK for Glassfish Application Server

Since the latest Imixs Workflow release 2.1.0 we recommend to run Imixs JEE Workflow Applications on Glassfish Application Server using JDK 1.6.

When you have updated the JDK 1.5 to the latest JDK 1.6 make sure to pay attention also to the Glassfish environment configuration which is used by Glassfish on startup...

[Read More]

Imixs Workflow runs on JBoss Application Server

The Imixs JEE Workflow components are successfully tested on the latest release of JBoss Application Server V 5.1.0.GA (JBossAS 5). The JBoss Application Server is the one of the most widely used Java application servers on the market.

The Imixs JEE Workflow is a full featured Workflow Management System (WFMS) based on the Java EE5 specification and fulfills the requirements to a scalable, transactional, robust and simple deployable Java EE Workflow System.
JBoss 5 for the Java EE5 codebase fully complies with the Java EE5 specification. So the JBossAS 5 is an ideal platform for Workflow Management Systems based on the Imixs Open Source Workflow.
The Imixs JEE Project site provides additional Installation guides for JBoss and also informations about deployment strategies to get best results running the Imixs Worklow on JBoss Application Server.

Read more about the Imixs Java EE Workflow System.

New version 2.1.0 final released!

The latest version 2.1.0 of the Imixs Workflow and the Imixs Java EE Workflow components are now final released! The new version includes a bunch of updates and new features.

Also the 2.1.0 release is now supporting Java EE 6 and is tested with Glassfish V3 Application Server! Therefor the deployment is simplified and now it is much more easy to use the components in your own Java EE project. It's easy to integrate the Imixs Worklfow Engine into your web project and build a scalable, transactional, robust and simple deployable Java EE Workflow System.

Check out the Imixs Workflow and build your business application in a fast and easy way now.

Read more about the project on the Imixs Project site.

Or read the Quick guide how to install the sample application on a Glassfish V3 or Glassfish V2.1 application server.

We also provide a blog with a tutorial to get an overview about the project.

Also components of the Imixs Workflow Project are now provided as Maven artifacts in the central maven repository. This makes it much more easy to use the components in your projects if you are working with maven.

ORACLE-FIX 2.0.1

Running the latest stable release of the Imixs JEE Workflow components (imixs-workflow-jee-impl-2.0.1) on a Oracle database can lead into a situation where users did not find any entities or can process new workitems.

The reason for this issue is a query optimizer used in one of the core EJBs. The Problem did not occur on MySQL Database Pools but on Oracle Database Pools.

To fix this problem please use on oracle based workflow systems the following hot fix release:

imixs-workflow-jee-impl-2.0.1-ORACLE-FIX

This patch is available in the subversion repository in /branches. Please let us know if you have any problems. The bug will be fixed in upcoming new 2.0.2 release. Please see also details at Issue Tracker Issue #55.

Release 2.0.2 - enhanced Web Services

In the upcoming new release 2.0.2 the Imixs JEE Workflow provides - among other things a new Web Service implementation which will become much more flexible. Now as the Imixs XML API is fully based on JAXB the SOAP Web Services and the REST Web Services are separated into web modules. This makes is much more easy to use these interfaces in workflow projects as the deployment strategy has changed. As announced the new release will run on JEE5 (Glassfish 2.1) as also under JEE6 (Glassfish 3). And also the deplyoment becomes more flexible as you are now no longer forced to deploy all web service modules together with your application.

The project documentation will be extended in the near future with an additional section for XML & Web Services.

You can check out the current 2.0.2-SNAPSHOT release from the Subversion repository. See also the new snapshot releases of imixs-workflow-xml, imixs-workflow-rest and imixs-workflow-soap. If you have any comments or questions please post the in the Imixs Forum. 

RichFaces Fileupload

The RichFaces Web Framework provides a powerful and flexible fileupload component to handle user triggered file uploads inside a web application.

To read more about the the RichFaces Fileupload see the online example.

You can use this RichFaces component in conjunction with the Imixs Workflow components in an easy way using the Imixs BLOBWorkitems.  BLOBWorkitems can be used to save large binary data like photos, videos or richtext together with a workflow item. Read more about the BLOBWOrktiems on the Imixs JSF-Tools page.

The following example shows how to integrate the RichFaces Fileupload Component into a jsf form page...[Read More]

Managing file attachments and large binary objects (BLOB)

In the latest version of the Imixs JSF Tools 2.0.2 we provide a new Controller Bean which allows managing file attachments and large binary objects (BLOB). The new contoller class is called BLOBWorkitemController.

This BLOBWorkitemController is used to store large objects into a single ItemCollection mapped to a EntityBean. The BlobWorkitem is always bounded to a parent workitem by its referrer id ($uniqueidRef). So an application can implement a lazy loading for BLOBWorkitems. The read- and write access settings of BLOBWorkitems are automatically synchronized to the settings of the parent workitem. So the security features of the Imixs Workflow controller are full supported. The Data of a BLOB WOrkitem can be accessed by an embedded Itemcollection which can be loaded and saved throgh the controller bean. This makes it really easy to manage file attachments inside a JSF application. See also more infos and examples on the Imixs JSF-Tools Project Homepage.

Version 2.0.2 announcement

We are currently working on the next Release 2.0.2 of the Imixs JEE Workflow Engine. The new release will support JEE6 and Glassfish 3. It includes also extended Rest Service API and some additional bug fixes. See the Issue tracker for more details or check out the current Snapshot Sources.

Glassfish & OpenID - JSR-196 with OpenID4Java

Imixs supports now a new Login Module which enables JEE Web Applications to authenticate against OpenID Providers. 

You can test a Imixs Workflow Application using your own Google Account or any other OpenID Account on the ShareYourWork Online Workflow Plattform.

Read details about this Authentication Module for Glassfish here.

Comparsion of JBPM and Imixs Workflow

If you take a closer look at the Imixs Workflow Project you may ask yourself where the project is different to other Workflow Engines like JBoss JBPM. So I will try to do a short comparison of JBPM and Imixs Workflow. This comparison is not in technical detail but it should give an overview about the goals the two open source projects. First I want to point out that the Imixs Workflow and JBPM are not rivals in the BPM market. Both projects are open source and both try to find solutions for similar but not equal problems in business process management.

In general JBPM and Imixs Workflow follow different goals in the area of business process management. Where JBPM is more focusing on the technical aspects of a workflow, the Imixs Workflow try to support the users needs during a business process. JBPM gives you - as a developer - the possibility to control the flow (workflow) in a business process. You can provide the engine with implementations which takes care about the current state of a process instance and you can implement event handlers to control the transition from one state to another.
The Imixs Workflow tries to provide the end-user with informations about the running tasks and the engine take care about typical functionality of a human based worklfow management system.
So lets begin with the Imixs Modeler. With this technical modeling tool you describe a business process mostly started by a user. In each transition (WorklfowActivity) you describe what should happen with the process instance. Therefore the Imixs Modeler provides a set of WorklowPlugins which implement typical workflow functions like:

• Email notification (e.g. when a new task was started)
• Process documentation (what happens during a workflow of a process instance)
• Access Control (who should be able access or modify a process instance)
• Creation of Versions of a process instance
  
• ...and so on..

The Imixs Worklfow Plugins are comparable to JBPM ActionHandlers. But the goal of the Imixs Workflow project is to provide precise implementations of these functions.
So for example you can use the Imixs Modeler to configure a email notification



The org.imixs.workflow.jee.plugins.MailPlugin will then read this configuration during a process step and will perform sending a SMTP Mail Message.

Or another example is the workflow History. This allows you to describe what happens to a process during the editing by the users. This workflow history can be displayed by an application to document the process flow.



As you can see these are less technical aspects and there is one of the differents to JBPM which is more answering the question how technical modules play together during a workflow transition. The Imixs Workflow is more focusing on human need during a business process.

But one of the most important features of the Imixs Workflow is the access control of a process instance. You can define in each transition who can read or modify the process instance (workitem).



These settings will be processed by the org.imixs.workflow.plugins.AccessPlugin and mapped to the data management used by the workflow application.
An typical scenario for this feature is a publishing process fully controlled by the workflow engine. Imagine you have a document which is edited by a team of web-authors. This document has a read and write restriction so only the editor-team is able to read or modify the document. When the document goes through a publishing process a chief-editor can publish the document to the internet. Now the workflow engine release the read restriction and restrict the write access to a chief-editor team. So as a result now this document is readable by anonymous web users but only editable by the chief-editor. The hole functionality is completely controlled by the workflow engine and the model description. There is no need to implement this behavior inside the application.

So you can see the Imixs Workflow is more focusing what an actor in a business process can do with a document or what should happen with a document.

To get all this functionality into your application you need an implementation of an Imixs Workflow Management System. I am talking about Workflow Management System and not about Workflow Engine. This is because the Engine is only responsible for the flow of a workitem and not for the access and representation from a end-user-view.

As you can see on our project site the Imixs project consists of different parts and libraries. There is the Imixs API which is a basic Workflow Framework implemented in Java, the Imixs XML library which is providing xml client functions for WebServices or Rest Services. And the Eclipse based modeler to describe the technical model details like email messages or the versioning of a document.

All parts are highly extensible. Also the Imixs Modeler allows to implement an application specific plugin and control elements.
But if you want start with the Imixs Workflow "out of the Box" the Imxis JEE Workflow is the most interesting part of the project. This is a full featured workflow management system based on the JEE5 spec. This implementation allows you to control any business process in any kind of JEE/Java application. You can check out the "imixs-workflow-jsf-sample" which is a workflow demo application and also a good starting point to begin an individual workflow app.

There is a tutorial available which explains how all parts of the JEE Implementation fit together.
http://workflow.imixs.org/roller/imixsworkflow/entry/building_a_imixs_workflow_webapp

As I explained at the beginning I don't want to go in technical details but give an overview what the Imixs Workflow is in different to JBPM. If you have any comments please let me know.

Imixs Workflow JEE Lib 2.0.1 released

Today the new version 2.0.1 of the Imixs Worklfow JEE Library was finally released.

Read more about the Imixs Workflow API on the www.imixs.org Project Site.

We are starting now immediate the 2.0.2-SNAPSHOT release. One goal of this new release is support for Hibernate and JBoss APP Server.

Imixs Workflow API 2.0.1 released

Today the new version 2.0.1 of the Imixs Worklfow API was finally released.

Read more about the Imixs Workflow API on the www.imixs.org Project Site.

Tags

Search

Up to 10 Recent Entries

• Installationsanleitung Liferay mit Tomcat auf Windows
• BPM solutions using Java EE
• Modeler Help updated!
• Switching JDK for Glassfish Application Server
• Imixs Workflow runs on JBoss Application Server
• New version 2.1.0 final released!
• ORACLE-FIX 2.0.1
• Release 2.0.2 - enhanced Web Services
• RichFaces Fileupload
• Managing file attachments and large binary objects (BLOB)

Feeds

• All
• /News
• /Business
• /Technology
• Comments

Categories

• All
• News
• Business
• Technology

Bookmarks

• imixs Workflow Blog (german)
• imixs.org
• imixs.com
• Ralph's Java Blog