“Less-Code BPM” with camunda fox server, Activiti and JBoss AS 7

September 28 2011 by Daniel Meyer · 4 Comments

camunda fox icon

the brand new camunda fox icon

Yes you have read correctly: “less-code”. At camunda we are pretty sure that there are large classes of business process that cannot be implemented in a zero-code fashion (i.e. without having to write custom implementation code). So if we are taking away “zero-code”, but what we can do is offer “less-code” :)

Our experience in numerous process implementation projects has shown that one of the largest challenges in BPM, is defining and setting up the infrastructure. Getting integration right is extremely hard and mostly about nasty stuff like deployment, classloading, transactions, versioning, etc. So in order to be able to implement “features” or “business logic” (whatever you want to call it), you have to solve a lot of technical problems. But what if I said, that this is all in the past? What if I said that you could deploy a simple .jar file containing a process diagram and a couple of services and that’s it? And classloading, transactions and stuff like @Inject ProcessEngine just “magically” works? You would read the rest of this blog post, now, wouldn’t you? :)
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BPMN bei der T-Systems MMS

September 22 2011 by Jakob Freund · 1 Comment

Seit einigen Monaten unterstützen wir die T-Systems Multimedia Solutions bei der Prozessmodellierung mit BPMN. In dem konkreten Projekt “POMS 3.0″ geht es um eine relativ umfangreiche Dokumentation der vorhandenen Geschäftsprozesse. Die Automatisierung mit Process Engines etc. ist in diesem Fall also kein Thema, sondern es kommt auf eine zweckmäßige und leicht verständliche fachliche Beschreibung der Prozesse an.
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BPMCon 2011 im Rückblick

September 20 2011 by Jakob Freund · 2 Comments

BPMCon 2011

BPMCon 2011

Es ist geschafft: Unsere erste komplett eigene BPM-Konferenz liegt hinter uns. Und mit ca. 130 Teilnehmern ist sie auch gar nicht mal so klein ausgefallen. Für alle diejenigen, die nicht dabei sein konnten (oder den Tag noch einmal Revue passieren lassen wollen), kommt hier ein kleiner Rückblick.
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Process Engine Configuration Options with Activiti CDI

September 20 2011 by Daniel Meyer · 1 Comment


In my previous blog post I showed how we can implement human task management with activiti and activiti-cdi. In that post we configured the activiti process engine using a spring application context. Some people send me an email, asking whether we have to use spring or whether there are different options. There are. Please note that this post is not yet about “the cool thing” I am hinting at since last week but about something different (but still moderately cool :) ). In today’s (short) post I want to explore different options for configuring activiti cdi.
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Build your own activiti task explorer with CDI and JSF 2

September 17 2011 by Daniel Meyer · 14 Comments


A couple of days ago, I promised that I would unveil “first class activiti support in Java EE 6”. Today I will give you a first taste. But keep in mind: what I am showing below is cool, but: it is by far not the coolest thing we have currently lined up. So stay tuned.

Many of our customers embed Activiti in their own applications, in many instances to support task or case management. In such a situation we do not use activiti explorer but implement task management ourselves, tightly integrated in our application. Today I want to show how we can use the activiti-cdi module to implement human task management. The activiti-cdi module is an activiti contribution by camunda (I am the module lead) and we have made huge progress over the last months. In this article I showcase some of the features of the current trunk, which will be released with activiti 5.8 (released on October 1st). We will see that in order to create JSF task forms, in simple cases we do not even have to write Java code. At the same time, we have the full power of Java EE 6 at our fingertips, if we need more. So today, we are going to build JSF based task management in under an hour!
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Let’s move to Java EE 6 – or not?

September 14 2011 by Daniel Meyer · 1 Comment

Lately, we have many clients asking us whether they should make the move to Java Enterprise 6. I think that the answer depends on where you are coming from and where you want to go with your project. No really?? You don’t say… ;) No seriously, while the Java EE 6 programing model offers superior functionality / key stroke and a new generation of breath-taking-cool application servers is out, it might not be a good fit for every one. At camunda we think that Java EE 6 is very well suited for implementing process solutions. At the moment we are pursuing two themes: we offer a Java EE 6 training where we cover both general topics and specific technical business process implementation patterns and on the other hand, we are currently developing advanced activiti integration for the Java EE platform. In this post I want to summarize my current position on Java EE 6 and the question on whether one should migrate to the new platform.

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