Developing a Bonita Application
Hello everybody,
My name is Sergio and I'm going to do my career project about BPM.
After analyzing different BPM tools I decided for Bonita BPM but, first of all, I would like to know your opinion about what I want to do.
Basically, I would like to get these things:
- BPM process involing 3-4 actors (for ex. Customer, employee, director, etc..)
- Different forms for each user task.
- SOA Layer using invokes to j2ee webservices.
- Documents management (put/retrieve from an extenernal repository. For eg. FTP server).
- Possibility of initialize bpm cases using an external batch that read a load file.
- Possibility of initialize bpm cases recevingin JMS events in a queue.
For do this, I installed Bonita BPM Community 6.2.
Please, I would be very greateful if anybody can answer these questions:
- What version is better that I use to develop this application, 5.x or 6.x? I think I will find more examples for 5.x..
- Will I met any limitation if I'm using Community edition? Are there anything, commented previously, that I will not be able to develop?
- Does it exist any example or sample containing similar features? I could use it to learn and clarify my self.
Thanks in advance, I hope be often in touch from now =)
Hello Sergio,
About the community edition limitations - what concerns the forms and web services, the commercial edition has much richer features for forms and a few more adapters. IMHO the user forms are one of strong sides of the Bonita BPM. Apart from the form features (even limited, still richer than any other products), the community limitations (I've met) are more on non-functional side - performance, team development support, clustering, security, etc. For a basic application, you may be good with the community edition too.
Well - there's no JMS API or adapter, but it's quite easy to implement one. For basic things there are out-of-box adapters (CMIS, WS, ..), for the rest you can always call Java code or implement your own adapter :P
About examples - the Bonitasoft page contains library of example processes. Plenty of them.
Have fun.. Gabriel
Comments
Thanks for your help Gabriel.
Then, as you say, for a basic application I will not met limitations. It's nice to know this =)
I was searching for examples in http://community.bonitasoft.com/projects but, unfortunately, I didn't find anyone that shows me how to do a webservice invoke or how to manage documents using an external environment.
Perhaps, there are other url repository that I don't know?
About which Bonita version I should use.. I would like to know your opinion. 6.x is the newest, but maybe I will find more examples and it will be easier to work in 5.x. What do you think?
Forgive my insistence, I hope not to be boring with my quesitons =)
Hello Sergio :)
to call an external web service you need an external system, therefore you won't find a really specific working example between examples. Searching youtube you can find nice to-dos (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnhHe7j6824).
Basically - for every task you may attach a connector action. There are a few connectors available, check them. Really.
For documents, there are Alfresco and CMIS conntectors. In theory you could use the CMIS connector with any CMIS compliant CMS, but I haven't use them yet (honestly - I don't believe it's so painless, I worked with several CMSs and all had their own perks). Bonita BPM should play nicely with the eXo platofrm.
If you're starting, I'd start with v. 6. Yes, it is new, but has few features extra and some fixes.
Carpe diem.. Gabriel