OSWorkflow is a mature open-source Java workflow engine. It is mainly aimed at the programmer and not an end user or business analyst. For the end user or business analyst, it includes a user-friendly visual workflow modeler designed only for basic usage.
This section will cover the basic concepts needed to create simple but useful process definitions using OSWorkflow. In the next section, we will generate a simple workflow to request holidays and finally you will have a complete working process. The example includes creating a very simple definition and the instantiation of new processes based on that descriptor.
OSWorkflow defines the process definition in an XML file called workflow descriptor. The OSWorkflow descriptor XML must have a root element of workflow
and obligatory child elements named steps
and initial-actions
. Here is a snippet of the sample file bundled with the distribution.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE...