I have run across 5 BPMS vendors interested in my BPMN-I work: Activiti, BonitaSoft, Oracle, SAP, and IBM. Of the five, BonitaSoft is so far the most successful in actually implementing BPMN 2.0-based model interchange. Not only that, they are the only one so far that has implemented any of my suggestions for conforming to the xsd and BPMN-I.
Here’s an example. I created the following diagram in itp commerce Process Modeler for Visio:
That’s the top level diagram. Here is the expansion of Sub1 on a child-level page:
itp’s BPMN 2.0 export wasn’t perfect. Here is the BPMN-I profile report:
After I fixed these errors in XMLSpy, I imported into pre-release BonitaSoft 5.5. It looks like this:
No, it isn’t perfect, but it’s better than any other tool I have seen so far. What couldn’t it handle?
- Pools and lanes
- Message flows
- Subprocess converted to Call activity
- Boundary events on subprocess
- Event gateway converted to XOR gateway
- Loop marker on task
- Non-interrupting boundary event converted to interrupting
- Multiple pages converted to a single page
The red Xs in BonitaSoft are presumably due to missing executable details. The layout is reasonably faithful to Visio, even the bendpoints of the connectors. To support the Descriptive subclass of BPMN (and BPMN-I), BonitaSoft needs to work on subprocess, message flows, pools and lanes… but so far I would put them way out in front in the race to provide true BPMN 2.0-based import-and-edit. Also, they are by far the easiest to install and run. So three cheers for BonitaSoft!
Hi Bruce,
could you email me the BPMN 2.0 XML – Export coming from itp for your example? And also the fixed version you created?
I would like to run 1 or 2 little tests concerning Activiti and then inform you about the results (if you are interested?)
cheers Jakob
Jakob,
Sorry I missed this one last week. I’m off to IBM Impact now but will send when I return on Wednesday. BTW I thought Bernd’s article on calling web service from Activiti was really good, and the comment thread on it as well. I am on the “XML side” of the argument rather than the “java side”, but there is some merit to both. Remember the BPMN 2.0 serialization is meant to be an interchange format, not necessarily the internal executable format. Activiti/Camunda should be able to map the xml style to the java style if interchange with other tools is a goal.
–Bruce
[…] too, to be the subject of Bruce Silver’s appreciation. Three Cheers for BonitaSoft – we’re ahead of the pack in incorporating the BPMN2 […]
Bruce,
Have you by any chance taken a look at the new BPMN 2.0 Eclipse designer for jBPM? It supports most of the BPMN 2.0 specification, including BPMNDI. If not, definitely check out the video that opens a few of the BPMN 2.0 examples that are provided with the specification itself 😉
Or if you could email the process in question at jbpm-dev@lists.jboss.org I could take a look for you.
We’re definitely planning to add validation to this in an extensible manner, from simple XSD validation (which is currently supported) to completeness checking (whether an executable process really contains all the details to make it executable), etc. More advanced BPMN-I validation as you describe could definitely play a role here.
Kris
I haven’t tried it yet. Are you the developer?
Personally, no 😉 I’m leading the JBoss jBPM project, which is using the BPMN 2.0 specification for modeling executable business processes. This is currently being developed inside JBoss as a new BPMN 2.0 editor that will be used in several JBoss projects, a few colleagues are currently working on it and extending it. I’m planning to consume that editor in our project. We try to support as much as possible of the specification, including BPMNDI.
So any feedback on its BPMN 2.0 import-and-edit capabilities and interoperability with other tooling you might be using would be very welcome! Or if you could provide us with the XML of the process you were using to test this, I could give it a try for you.
Kris
I used Bonita and BizAgi. BizAgi is better
You should elaborate why you think so. My context is BPMN 2.0 support and as far as I know BizAgi is still BPMN 1.x.
Took a look at Bonita demo video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGyiC9-NSQ… sequence flow within sample diagrams didn’t look very BPMN 2.0 compilnat… or even BPMN 1.0
I looked at the video. Nothing wrong with the tool, it seems to me. Just the usual marketing crime of suggesting that the demo diagram some engineer created is actually valid and executable. Just because a tool lets you draw invalid diagrams doesn’t make it a bad tool… unless it has no way of checking validity.
Well i installed this tool because it is free (i think) and i wanted to try a bpms in action myself. also took a tutorial to create my first automated process flow (yay!).
Well, it has a way validation. But it might prove to be deceitful because (i think) it checks validity to system rather than notation.
but… a great tool i really enjoyed it!
Can you please email me your bpmn 2.0 file ? I’d like to import it into IYOPRO as well.
Thanks, Thomas
Hello evereybody,
I want to know if the visio modeler enables the XML serialization of the BPMN 2.0 diagramm?
Thanks in advance
This isn’t the right post for this comment. Which Visio modeler are you talking about? The itp commerce one does export BPMN 2.0. The Visio Premium 2010 native template does not.