JBoss adds workflow engine to middleware stack

Open source company JBoss has added a workflow engine to its roster as it continues building out its middleware platform around the JBoss application server.

JBoss Java Business Process Management (JBPM) 2.0 was developed out of the jBpm open source project initiated and led by Tom Baeyens, version one of which has been shipping for a year.

Baeyens, who joined JBoss on 1 October, started the project after becoming frustrated at the lack of suitable workflow software to run within a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for one of his clients.

JBPM 2.0 is designed to implement a formal description of every step of a business process, keeping a record of status and handling things such as waiting on manual responses, which is key to automating the operation of business functions.

JBPM features a native process definition language aimed at supporting all the competing BPM specifications such as BPEL, BPML, ebXML and WSCI.

Baeyens told vnunet.com that the main change from version 1.0 to 2.0 was to decouple it from the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE).

"Version 1.0 needed an Enterprise Java Beans container to run it. Now it only requires a simple JVM and database, but we've added a wrapper to run it in a J2EE container," he said.

But Baeyens added that, for now, the software was primarily for use by developers who would write their own procedures. This is partly because, as yet, there is no web-based graphical design capability.

This is planned for the forthcoming release within the next nine months, and will interface with the Eclipse open source developer environment and JBoss Nukes portal framework.

JBPM uses Hibernate, also part of the JBoss portfolio, for database access. Hibernate is designed to allow the user to specify any major database and then handles the translation to and from JBPM.

Available immediately as a free download, JBPM is licensed under the Lesser General Public License. Training, support and consultancy will be provided through JBoss Authorised Service Partners. The software is available at www.jboss.com or www.jbpm.org.

"The Professional Open Source model pioneered by JBoss is proving to be disruptive," Marc Fleury, JBoss chief executive, said in a statement.

"As we expand, we are delivering more alternatives than ever to companies looking for innovative and cost-effective software."