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Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1725473]

Thu, 03 March 2016 17:11

Robert Brodt

Messages: 811
Registered: August 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, CO

Senior Member

Hi all,

As you may or may not know, the BPMN2 Modeler is sponsored by JBoss/Red Hat and was originally developed as the primary BPM process editor for Eclipse tooling for Drools/jBPM (which is being rebranded as BRMS/BPMS and/or BxMS, B*MS, etc.) The long-range plan for the jBPM product is to migrate existing developers to use the Web Tooling (a.k.a. KIE Workbench) editors within the Eclipse IDE. How, when and if this is going to work is still a bit of a mystery but suffice it to say that the plan is to deprecate the BPMN2 Modeler native Eclipse plug-in, in favor of "Web Designer" which is the browser-based BPM process editor offered by KIE Workbench.

My personal feelings aside, I'm not convinced that Web Designer is the best choice for a native Eclipse BPM process development tool, and I'm trying to build a case to present to my Product Manager, arguing against discontinuing development of the BPMN2 Modeler project. Since Red Hat is the industry leader in Open Source Software, we do listen to you the community members when it comes to these kinds of decisions.

Please reply to this forum topic with your opinions/experiences/recommendations.

Thanks,
"The management"

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1725537 is a reply to message #1725473]

Fri, 04 March 2016 08:56

Thomas Schurins

Messages: 1
Registered: March 2016

Junior Member

Yes it is a shame.

The good point about the elipse plugin is its integration with the workspace: the possibility to search the whole classpath to find .wid files and icons is a real added value.

And also, as eclipse plugin development is well known, it is possible to extend the plugin in order to add project specific stuff like validation, completion, filtering, &c. We have done this on one of our project, and it really simplify the bpmn2 flow development.

Thomas

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1725609 is a reply to message #1725537]

Fri, 04 March 2016 21:51

Robert Brodt

Messages: 811
Registered: August 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, CO

Senior Member

Thanks Thomas! Can you elaborate on the project you were working working on, and your role in the development process?

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1725625 is a reply to message #1725473]

Sat, 05 March 2016 08:40

Ralph Soika

Messages: 193
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi,

I also believe that the BPMN2 Plugin has become an important modelling tool within the Eclipse platform (also for a lot of business users who are not using Eclipse for java development).
What I did not understand so far is: Is KIE Workbench an Eclipse project or something different, competing to Eclipse?

===
Ralph

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1727172 is a reply to message #1725625]

Sun, 20 March 2016 21:58

Martin Jonsson

Messages: 21
Registered: March 2013

Junior Member

Hello Rob.

I'm sad to hear this news. I can understand the appeal for companies to go down this route, however, the biggest problem as I think, is that without the eclipse locally installed, it will hem the creativity of the extensions built on top of the eclipse plugin.

One current example is the SAP WEB IDE that is a cloud based version of eclipse SAPUI5 development with orion and I'll bet it will not attract many users to built custom plugins on top of it.

I work in the SAP BPM area and know the BPMN modeler is used internally at SAP, so you could always ask them how they feel about abandoning the BPEM modeler:-)

For myself, business loves BPMN so we build extensions to the modeler that fetches and updates different software models to the BPEM data model. Take any SAP process tool and you can with the modeler and EMF get a working BPMN process from it:

Examples (Warning SAP lingo):

1) Intercompany data exchange processes for utilities and telecommunications.
2) Workflow to business process
3) Process observing

More is possible, I'm personally just starting to grasp the possibilities.

I work for instance on a small BPM engine in SAP that uses the modeler to model the processes in a business friendly way and then run on a small SAP BPM engine.

Cheers
Martin

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1727733 is a reply to message #1725473]

Sat, 26 March 2016 02:00

Marco Cattarin

Messages: 1
Registered: March 2016

Junior Member

This is really a shame!
There are things that just cannot be done using the web interface (yet).
In my case, we are building a whole set of custom task and in some scenarios (i.e. custom human task) this cannot be achieved using the "standard" tools.
We made a custom process engine to be used as a framework, relying on the JBPM libraries and we are going to customize the plugin in order to guide the developers during the process developments phase.
BPMN Modeler and Kie Workbench have two different kind of audience, I don't wanna say that one is better than the other, and for these reason both must exist and evolve.

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1727776 is a reply to message #1727733]

Sun, 27 March 2016 09:43

Ralph Soika

Messages: 193
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

I agree with Marco. An example are Junit tests.
As a software architect you can provide Junit tests to support developers during the modelling phase. So they can test there models against application specific requirements. For example testing for specific participants or data-objects expected by the application. Eclipse allows a lot of flexibility here.

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1734414 is a reply to message #1727776]

Wed, 08 June 2016 07:41

Yury Remishevsky

Messages: 2
Registered: April 2016

Junior Member

Hello, Robert!

Sad to hear such news about possible extinction of BPMN Modeler plugin. My team is willing to use Modeler as an IDE part of a complex BPM lifecycle. The primary goal of using Eclipse Modeler is to build executable processes (we use Activiti engine as an execution environment) from higher level BPMN models, imported from different modelling suits; we integrate with a variety of intranet services and our own core banking platform. Our project is just starting and we are exploring extension possibilities of Modeler.

We are planning to devote some resources to fixing bugs and we'd like to commit our work to community.

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Re: Help save the BPMN2 Modeler Project from extinction! [message #1734996 is a reply to message #1734414]

Tue, 14 June 2016 14:08

Robert Brodt

Messages: 811
Registered: August 2010
Location: Colorado Springs, CO

Senior Member

Thanks Yury for your support. Let me know how I can help you help me, by having a look at the current bug list and indicating which bugs & features you think your team might be able to help with.

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