Presentation I did back in 2008 for a JBoss end-user event.

1. Do & Don’ts of BPM
The Full Stack
13/03/2008
Joram Barrez - Dolmen

2. About
 Software engineer at Dolmen Computer Applications
 Using jBPM from Monday to Friday
• Before january ’08  business processes on a small scale
• Since january ’08, in a team of 3 people  building a large
scale back-end using jBPM for process orchestration in a
departement of the Flemish governement
 Other fields of interest:
• Agile development & (J)Ruby on Rails
12/10/12 ı 2

3. Goals
 jBPM in some real-life action
 Demonstration use case: PoC “jBPM orchestration”
• Revitalization of mainframe architecture
• PoC built to show feasability of project
• Using some “cool” technologies (jBPM, ESB, EJB3, …)
12/10/12 ı 3

4. Content
 Customer Requirements
 JBPM Performance
 Proof of Concept
 BI/BAM
 Demo
12/10/12 ı 4

5. Typical architecture
12/10/12 ı 5

6. Requirements
 Every application talks directly to its dependent applications
• Mediation required to keep it manageable
 Workflow logic is scattered across different applications
• Centralisation needed
 Reporting functionality is a must
 It must be “fast enough”
12/10/12 ı 6

7. Why jBPM?
 Previous experience
 Embeddable
• jBPM is “Yet Another Java Library”
• jBPM can be used in any application (web, desktop, enterprise, …)
on any database
 Openness
• Extremely extensible, what often is needed in business processes
 Convenient for developers
12/10/12 ı 7

8. Content
 Customer Requirements
 JBPM Performance
 Proof of Concept
 BI/BAM
 Demo
12/10/12 ı 8

9. jBPM Performance
 We knew jBPM could tackle the workflow requirements
 But is it “fast enough”?
• Simple measurement used (e.g. no dedicated server)
• 2500 runs of an automated jBPM process (jpdl 3.2.2)
• Timings are average between start en stop
time of the processes
• Intel Core Duo 2 Ghz
• 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• 5400 rpm SATA HD
• MySQL 5.0.45 Database
12/10/12 ı 9

10. Some performance numbers (sequential)
2 ms
2 ms 3 ms
Non-optimized Hibernate config: 16 ms! From 1.800.000 processes/hour  225 000 processes/hour
5-6 ms
12/10/12 ı 10

11. Some performance numbers
12 ms
5 ms
12/10/12 ı 11

12. Realistic business process: Handling a hospital report
New Report created
3 ms
Check Report type
Some reports need
manual verification
Automatic checking
Complete & archive report
Remove report
12/10/12 ı 12

13. Content
 Customer Requirements
 JBPM Performance
 Proof of Concept
 BI/BAM
 Demo
12/10/12 ı 13

14. Proof of Concept (PoC)
 Goal: build a small scale application that proofs the
feasibility of the project
• But easily can be mapped to a larger scale
 Only one business process (“Handling a hospital report”)
 Only two applications need communication
• Report generator
• Client application
12/10/12 ı 14

15. Application mediation
 Problem: applications talk to each other directly, resulting
in a cobweb of dependent applications
• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) problem
• Topic on its own
 Solution (for this PoC)
• Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
12/10/12 ı 15

16. What is an ESB? (without getting too technical)
 Best comparison: mailbox Destination
“ROUTING”
Protocol?
Don’t care, as
Long as the message
Is delivered
12/10/12 ı 16

17. What is an ESB? (without getting too technical)
Destination
“ROUTING”
TCP/IP
Advantage: applications
only need to communicate with SOAP(Webservice)
the ESB. They don’t need to use the Protocol? JMS
‘language’ of the destination anymore
Products
- Mule ESB (customer pref)
- BEA Aqualogic Don’t care, as
- JBoss ESB* Long as the message
 SOA platform (inc. jBPM) Is delivered
12/10/12 ı 17
* http://parleys.com/display/PARLEYS/JBoss+ESB by Johan Kumps

18. Proof-of-Concept overview
Automatic Report Generation
(XML)
12/10/12 ı 18

19. Proof-of-Concept overview
Automatic Report Generation
(XML)
TCP
MULE
ESB
12/10/12 ı 19

20. Proof-of-Concept overview
Automatic Report Generation
(XML)
TCP TRANSFORMATION
(XSLT) MULE
ESB
JMS MESSAGE
JMS QUEUE
12/10/12 ı 20

21. Proof-of-Concept overview
Automatic Report Generation
(XML)
TCP TRANSFORMATION
(XSLT) MULE
ESB
JMS MESSAGE
JMS QUEUE
EJB 3 MDB
BPM Service
(EJB 3 SLSB)
12/10/12 ı 21

22. Proof-of-Concept overview
Automatic Report Generation
TCP TRANSFORMATION
(XSLT) MULE
ESB
JMS MESSAGE
JMS QUEUE
EJB 3 MDB
BPM Service
(EJB 3 SLSB)
12/10/12 ı 22

23. 12/10/12 ı 23

24. Content
 Customer Requirements
 JBPM Performance
 Proof of Concept
 BI/BAM
 Demo
12/10/12 ı 24

25. Business Intelligence (BI) /
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
 BI ~ BAM
• BAM  real-time monitoring/analysing metrics
• BI  historical monitoring/analysing metrics
• e.g. stock trade  buy/sell according to metrics
 Extracting extra business information for taking
“business decisions”
• Simple example
• Car repair  Availability of car history (malfunctions,…)
 Better judgement when fixing the car
12/10/12 ı 25

26. Business Intelligence (BI) /
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
“What you can’t measure, you can’t manage”
 BI/BAM is an “art”
• Tailoring to business is always needed
• Research field on its own (even academical)
• Data mining, OLAP, KPI, data warehousing,
slice/dice analysis, ETL, …
 Managers BI/BAM
12/10/12 ı 26

27. BI/BAM & jBPM
 BI/BAM often integrated in BPM products
 jBPM does not offer such functionality
• Discussions about BI/BAM and jBPM can be tracked online, so
it will be only a matter of time (hopefully)
 So, why should we choose jBPM if BI/BAM is missing?
• BI/BAM is extremely business-specific, so there will always be
need for custom implementations
• Openness of jBPM allows extremely business-specific BI/BAM,
which could be impossible with pre-made BI/BAM solutions
12/10/12 ı 27

28. PoC: BAM with SeeWhy*
 Young & enthousiastic, UK based software company
 Extremely well documented (hundreds of pages)
• 74 pages “SeeWhy with jBPM”
 SeeWhy Community/Enterprise Edition
• Realtime metrics, real time alerts, real time actions
12/10/12 ı 28
* http://www.seewhy.com/

29. SeeWhy workings
Event Queue (JMS)
Event
Calculations/
Aggregations
e.g. Show the average number
Of reports processed the last hour
12/10/12 ı 29

30. Combining jBPM & SeeWhy
Send an event to the queue
on the SeeWhy server
12/10/12 ı 30

31. Business Intelligence with jBPM
 All historical data is stored in the database by the jBPM engine
• So, BI is a matter of writing “the right queries”
 PoC
• Simple BI app
(JRuby on Rails)
12/10/12 ı 31

32. PoC : Complete picture
Report Generation
(XML)
TCP TRANSFORMATION
(XSLT)
JMS MESSAGE
JMS QUEUE
EJB 3 MDB
BPM Service
(EJB 3 SLSB)
BAM 12/10/12 ı 32
12/10/12 ı 32
BI

33. DEMO
TIME
12/10/12 ı 33

34. Lessons learned
 jBPM allows us to implement a wide range of business
processes, since we have the power of Java at disposal
 Business analysts aren’t fond of jBPM at first encounter
• Building business processes is not a matter of drag-and-drop!
• Business processes can’t be built without programmatic logic!
• Transactions, performance, …
 BI/BAM sells!
• Defining a basic BI/BAM framework for jBPM
12/10/12 ı 34

35. 12/10/12 ı 35