3 Replies Latest reply on Feb 28, 2010 3:42 AM by sebastian.s

    do you recomend jBPM 4.x for production use?

    xalperte

      Hi,

       

      We are developing an online booking system where jBPM is a core element of the solution. This solution must to be online in two months and our platform has integrated the jBPM 3.2.6 and jBPM 4.2 versions.

       

      My question is simple, what jBPM version do you recomend me? is jBPM 3.x more stable than the 4.x version.

       

      If jBPM 4.x is not ready for use in production environments, when do you think it would be ready?

       

      Thanks

        • 1. Re: do you recomend jBPM 4.x for production use?
          kukeltje

          It depends on

          - your database and applicationserver. There is another thread where WLS and Oracle pose issues in 4.x that will be 'fixed' in 4.4.

          - What you have implemented already in either and the complexity

          - ...

           

          If you have nothing, I'd go for 4.3 or trunk (4.4 in about 1 month) to be on the safer side with upgrading in the future. But agreed, 3.2.x  (x=6 is  'officially' released and 3.2.8/9 is in svn) has a more proven trackrecord, integration with seam and other things.

           

          So I cannot give you a real answer, just directions.

          • 2. Re: do you recomend jBPM 4.x for production use?
            xalperte

            We are using the following configuration:

             

            • JBoss AS 4.2.3
            • JBoss Portal 2.7.2
            • Seam 2.2.0, but jbpm-seam integration is not important for us. We do not use the jBPM-Seam functionality, we do by ourselves because it didn't exists support for portlet environment at the moment we integrated the 3.2.x version.
            • MySQL 5.1.x

             

            I'm attaching a zip with the model of the booking process. The process is composed by a Main Process and 7 Subprocesses.

             

            As you can see in the diagrams, we are using the following bpm functionalities:

             

            • Swim lanes
            • Main Process Global Event Listeners (start-end) to free the rooms when the process ends abnormally or is canceled.
            • Process-SubProcess communication. Main process waits until sub-processes ends.
            • Task and Wait states with transition timers.
            • The Task Nodes creates only 1 task, we do not need to create more than one task instance per node.
            • Email nodes to send notifications to the users when needed.
            • We have some Wait states that are waiting for a signal for external events like Payment Gateway and Insurance Services responses.

             

            One think that I do not know if it will be available soon is the variable history support.

             

            I have some questions and concerns but I will post new topics for them.

             

            Thanks

            • 3. Re: do you recomend jBPM 4.x for production use?
              sebastian.s

              There will be variable declarations in jBPM 4.4 I think. Have a look at JIRA: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPM-2506

              I don't know if that means that logging of variables will also be possible already. At least the issue describes how to enable and disable the history for certain variables.