Book Image

OSWorkflow: A guide for Java developers and architects to integrating open-source Business Process Management

Book Image

OSWorkflow: A guide for Java developers and architects to integrating open-source Business Process Management

Overview of this book

OSWorkflow is an open-source workflow engine written entirely in Java with a flexible approach and a technical user-base target. It is released under the Apache License. You can create simple or complex workflows, depending on your needs. You can focus your work on the business logic and rules. No more Petri Net or finite state machine coding! You can integrate OSWorkflow into your application with a minimum of fuss. OSWorkflow provides all of the workflow constructs that you might encounter in real-life processes, such as steps, conditions, loops, splits, joins, roles, etc.This book explains in detail all the various aspects of OSWorkflow, without assuming any prior knowledge of Business Process Management. Real-life examples are used to clarify concepts.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
OSWorkflow
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Introduction

Visual Process Modeling


Instead of writing the XML definition by hand, you can use the visual modeler. Although it's a little more restricted than the manual approach, it is very useful for non-technical people to specify a business process.

Visually Creating the Holiday Example

You can start the designer by typing java jar designer.jar on the command line of your system (given that the java command is on your path). First copy designer.jar into the lib/designer path of your unpacked OSWorkflow distribution. You have to do this because some library files cannot be found otherwise hopefully this will be fixed in the next version of OSWorkflow.

After the splash screen, a blank workspace screen will be displayed, like the one that follows:

This welcome screen prompts you to load an existing workspace or create a new one. We will create a new workspace to model the same holiday example, but this time visually. In the Select Workspace dialog, select the Create new workspace checkbox, and...