Book Image

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM

Book Image

Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM

Overview of this book

JBoss jBPM is a free, open-source, business process management solution. It enables users to create business processes that coordinate people, applications, and services. A business process is a sequence of activities triggered by a certain input that results in a valuable output. Business Process Management is about analyzing those activities in a structured way and eventually supporting their execution with a workflow application. This allows for the following results: Better management visibility of their business: improved decision making Low cost of inputs: de-skilled labor requirements, less waste, standardized components Better outputs: consistent quality, more customer satisfaction Businesses have always tried to manage their processes, but software such as jBPM brings the methodology and management theory to practical life. JBoss jBPM offers the following key features: Graphical process definition Flexibility to integrate code into the graphical process definition A customizable web-based workflow application that runs the process you’ve defined Easy programming model to extend the graphical process definition A process-oriented programming model (jPDL) that blends the best of process definition languages and Java. Easy to integrate with other systems through the JBoss middleware suite.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Introduction


This is where the hard work, but also the fun, really begins. We are going to get our hands dirty with JBoss jBPM and start building a process. Before we can do that, however, we need to get the toolset fully installed, and we also need to cover a few points of theory. Don't worry; we won't waste too much time on theoretical musings, as by far the best way to entrench understanding of a concept is to see it in action. The second half of the chapter will see us putting the theory into practice and using the tool to create our first process definition.

Compared to the previous chapter, the list of deliverables this time round is strikingly short. Nevertheless, as you will soon be able to tell as we go along, the length of the deliverables list is no indication of the required effort. By the end of this chapter, we will have delivered:

  • Full working installation of the JBoss jBPM suite of tools

  • A first iteration of the process definition for our target business process

The JBoss jBPM...