Hi guys,

I've got a question. We want to use the jBPM 4 as our process manager. We've choosen the BPMN as a notation which can be understood by both - developers and analysts guys.

It occurs that the only problem is the jPDL format. There are basically 2 tools which I know about, that the analyst can work on, and which can be used to export BPMN into the jPDL.

The first one is Eclipse jBPM/jPDL 4 editor which is nice, but it's very close to the developer world. It doesn't support the swimming pools, swimming lanes, timers, messaging and so on. So it's not fully BPMN editor, but rather a jPDL editor.

The second one is Visual Architect which is nice for the analysts guys, as it supports full BPMN, but its export to jPDL is very poor. I mean - jPDL 3.x? It's a bit old to be used right now, where jBPM 4 works on jPDL 4, and jBPM 5 is just around the corner.

So, we can choose to create jPDL-only diagrams using Eclipse plugin or create full BPMN diagrams in Visual Architect which can be exported to jPDL 3.x only. Needless to say - both ways are unsatisfactory...

There is a need for tool which can support BPMN (like BizAgi) and can export the result into the jPDL 4.x.

I've looked for xPDL -> jPDL translators (as there are some nice tools with xPDL export only) but without any luck. Only answers are like 'no' or 'it's not possible', so I guess it's futile to search for this tool?

Maybe there are some solutions (even commercial - we are definitely willing to pay if something will work properly) which I'm not be able to find or am not aware of?

Is the xPDL <-> jPDL translation really so problematic?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Pedro