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From: Adrian P. <ad...@qu...> - 2007-12-12 19:11:41
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Dear Mina, Thank you for your interest in the Open Business Engine, and apologies for the delayed reply (I've been out of the country). I've inserted answers inline below. Cheers, Adrian. Adrian Price Architect/Lead The Open Business Engine http://obe.sourceforge.net/ -----Original Message----- From: obe...@li... [mailto:obe...@li...] On Behalf Of Mina R Waheeb Sent: 4 December 2007 23:02 To: obe...@li... Subject: [Obe-developer] OBE Process Lifecycle Hi all, I'm new to OBE project and trying to embed the engine into already existed protocol. I have read the available doucmentation and examples which makes me believe it's possible to do that but I still have some questions: - In process instance lifecycle when the client should be invoked to start application? [AMP] In XPDL, a 'user task' is typically an <Activity> with a HUMAN <Performer> and one or more <Tool ... Type="APPLICATION"> entries. When an instance of that activity is started, it creates a work item for each HUMAN participant. When the human participant executes their work item through your application's worklist page/screen/feature/Portlet (or however you decide to expose worklist functionality to your users), the corresponding tool agent is invoked on the client side. Typically the tool agent will launch another local application or browser page. I can create my own ToolAgent which invokes the client through network protocol and return RUNNING code (is that keep the activity thread waiting?) or the ToolAgent is designed for execute APPLICATION in the client side and PROCEDURE in the server side, What is the best choice to do that? [AMP] That depends on whether the user needs to interact with the application or not. If yes, use an APPLICATION; if not, consider using a PROCEDURE if it is technically feasible to wrap the application code as a procedure invocation (depends upon parameterizability). - When the client finish the process execution and send the needed information to the server how can i resume the process? [AMP] The tool agent detects when the application has terminated and informs the server. However, there's no way to know whether the work that the user was supposed to do with the aid of the tool has actually been done, so it's not possible for OBE to automatically mark the work item as complete. The user is responsible for marking the work item complete. Doing so will result in the activity getting marked complete as well, depending on the activity finish mode and completion strategy (see the XPDL and OBE docs on these topics respectively). - What is WorkItem used for? [AMP] A work item represents the assignment of an activity instance to a workflow participant. Work items are generally presented to the user via a worklist handler, which allows work items to be executed, suspended, resumed, marked complete, reassigned and so on. Work items provide the means to launch software tools, as the aforegoing discussion describes. OBE provides a command line worklist handler and a JSF-based web worklist handler as examples. Thanks for OBE project community, please continue. Thank you, Mina R Waheeb. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper from Novell. From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going mainstream. Let it simplify your IT future. http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4 _______________________________________________ Obe-developer mailing list Obe...@li... https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/obe-developer |