Re: Loading a dia file using java

[Luis Villa <lvillap gmail com>]

Hello,

My intentions are more modest than a bpm platform. They were more like this: http://flow4jeclipse.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html

Just to generate simple classes that implement simple workflows through simple source code (nothing about persistence, SOA, etc).

Regards,

Luis

El mar., 9 jun. 2015 a las 22:13, Alejandro Imass (<aimass yabarana com>) escribió:

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:39 AM, Luis Villa <lvillap gmail com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to create java code from a workflow diagram. I'll look into
> dia2code, but the person that asked me to develop the utility wants it to be
> in java. Anyway, I'll look into it and, if I arrive to any conclusion, I'll
> share it.
>

Well that sounds like a pretty wild request and I believe there must
be some misunderstanding on the requirement.

Usually you don't translate Workflow to code directly (e.g. Java) but
rather to some declarative workflow definition and is usually in one
of two forms: EPC or Petri net.

So for example you would take a UML 2 Activity Diagram (similar to a
flow chart) and translate yo some Workflow XML such as:
http://search.cpan.org/~jonasbn/Workflow-1.41/lib/Workflow.pm#SYNOPSIS

I can't speak for the Java world but there are surely some standard
off-the-shelf Workflow engines that work much the same way as the one
above. I mean it would be very hard to develop a workflow code
generator from  scratch and is not even practical or useful.

The actual (e.g. Java) code should already exist in the actions
themselves as atomic procedures that are re-used in your workflow. In
Bonita for example the action itself is usually a Groovy script or a
call to an API of some sort. Same concept here.

Just as an idea a good architecture to deploy such a Workflow in Java
would probably be OSGi, where you could have a SOA model in JVM. So
individual actions are modelled as services and the workflow just
calls these services with IN/OUT params specified in the workflow....
OSGi would make it easy to add/evolve services without even restarting
the engine. Would surely beat the crap out of many commercial WF
engines I have played with.

Best,
Alejandro Imass
_______________________________________________
dia-list mailing list
dia-list gnome org
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/dia-list
FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/Dia/Faq
Main page at http://live.gnome.org/Dia