2012 02-04 fosdem 2012 - guvnor and j bpm designer

Geoffrey De Smet Marco Rietveld Managing workflows and business rules with Guvnor and jBPM designer

Business Logic Integration Business Logic Integration Platform Rule engine Workflow Complex event processing (CEP) Business Rule Management System (BRMS) Automated planning

Geoffrey De Smet Why would I need Drools and Guvnor?

Use cases I have hammer, so every problem is a nail?

The myth
Drools is a rule engine
So because
Drools can fulfil business rules
Drools is Turing complete
we should write the entire business layer in Drools?
No!
Not imperative
Not like Java, Scala, Groovy, ...
Declarative
Like RegEx, SQL, JPA-QL, …
Easier to read, better at scaling

When to use Drools
Extract business decisions in Drools that either:
Require schooled domain expertise
Change often/fast

Use cases
Financial decisions
Mortgages acceptance and interest calculation
Insurances acceptance and fee calculation

Use cases
Financial decisions
Price calculations
Phone/Telecom bills

Use cases
Financial decisions
Price calculations
Phone/Telecom bills
Diagnostics
Possible diseases based on symptoms

Use cases
Financial decisions
Price calculations
Phone/Telecom bills
Diagnostics
Complex validation
Car parts selection

Use cases
Financial decisions
Price calculations
Phone/Telecom bills
Diagnostics
Complex validation
Car parts selection
Not a good use case: an XML parser
Use Java code for that

Mortgages example

Developers don't like data input from spreadsheets
Before App 1.0: Mortgages rules in a spreadsheet
Which version/copy of the spreadsheet file?
Which field has the result our application needs?
Version 1 Version 2

Mortgage experts like the flexibility of spreadsheets
Since App 1.0: Mortgages rules in source code
Changing business rules not flexible enough
Business rules are hard coded in Java
Invalid: must be a number

Mortgage experts change their mind a lot
Flooded with new improvement requests:
when income below 500
when income below 1000 and age above 50
when income below 1% of mortgage amount
Invalid: must be a number

Mortgage experts like the flexibility of Guvnor
App 2.0: Mortgage rules in Guvnor repository
Flexible like spreadsheet
But backed by formal DRL and JavaBeans
No spreadsheet versions/copies

My business requires domain expertise Only mortgage managers understand mortgage rules

Schooled domain expertise
Are we, the developers, domain experts?
Yes, we've been working in this company for year(s).

Do we have
university's degree in economics? No
participated in mortgages conferences/courses? No
years of mortgage customer experience? No

Do we have
Do we have a clue when the mortgage rules need to change? No

Do we have
Do we have a clue when the mortgage rules need to change? No
Are we, the developers, domain experts? No
Mortgage manager is the domain expert

Domain experts can not read/write Java source code
Communication problem
Domain expert can not read it:
for (Mortgage m : mortgages ) { for (Applicant a : m.getApplicants()) { if (a.getAge() > 70 ) { boolean existsGuarantor = false ; for (Guarantor g : m.getGuarantors() { if (g.getAge < 60 ) { existsGuarantor = true ; } } // Will they spot the bug in this code? if (existsGuarantor) { m.setApproved( false ); } } } }

Domain experts can read rules in the Guided Rule Editor

Domain experts can write rules in the Guided Rule Editor Change

Translated to DRL Executed on JavaBeans

Guided Rule Editor demo video Demo video

Natural language (DSL)
DSL is even easier to read/write
Developers create the building blocks
Domain experts make the building
Source: wikipedia

My business rules change often This mortgage rule change must be released by noon

Deliver changes fast

Business rule change
Not a data change
Requires test and release lifecycle
Logic changes
Not a software change
Delivered in hours, not days
Self-service by mortgage manager

Testing before releasing
Domain experts need to unit test too
Example: mortgage of Erik must be disapproved

Releasing
Release a snapshot of the rules package
Available at URL:
http://127.0.0.1:8888/org.drools.guvnor.Guvnor/package/presentationmortgages/mortgagesDeployment

Deployment infrastructure

Auditable and reproducible Why was that mortgage approved last year?

Auditing
View old revisions of rules

Summary

Summary
Use Drools and Guvnor
When your business decisions either
Require domain expertise
Change often/fast

Marco Rietveld

How do we keep business analysts from bothering us? Wait, you want A to do D, but not B and C?!?

How do we let business analysts do their work?

The agenda
BPM, BPMN 2.0 and jBPM
What does jBPM Designer do?
Demo
Summary

B usiness P rocess M odelling
Visibility
Monitoring
High - level
Continuous improvement
Speed of development
Increased agility
A business process is a collection of steps that when executed, accomplish a specific goal. It can often be described using a flow chart.

Flexible and Adaptive Processes Traditional workflow systems have problems with change, complexity, flexibility, data-intensive applications... BPM helps us with:
Unstructured, non-linear or flexible processes
Adaptive Case Management
Data dependent/conditional processes
Event-driven BPM

BPMN 2.0
OMG specification
Model
Notation
Execution semantics
“Understandable” by all business users
Extensible

BPMN 2.0 Example <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <definitions id="Definition" targetNamespace="http://www.example.org/MinimalExample" xmlns="http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/20100524/MODEL" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.omg.org/spec/BPMN/20100524/MODEL BPMN20.xsd"> <process processType="Private" isExecutable="true" id="ScriptTask" name="ScriptTask Process" tns:packageName="com.sample" >  <startEvent id="_1" name="StartProcess" /> <scriptTask id="_2" name="Hello" scriptFormat="http://www.java.com/java" > <script>System.out.println("Hello World");</script> </scriptTask> <endEvent id="_3" name="EndProcess" > <terminateEventDefinition/> </endEvent>  <sequenceFlow id="_1-_2" sourceRef="_1" targetRef="_2" /> <sequenceFlow id="_2-_3" sourceRef="_2" targetRef="_3" /> </process> <bpmndi:BPMNDiagram> <bpmndi:BPMNPlane bpmnElement="ScriptTask" > <bpmndi:BPMNShape bpmnElement="_1" > <dc:Bounds x="16" y="16" width="48" height="48" /> </bpmndi:BPMNShape> <bpmndi:BPMNShape bpmnElement="_2" > <dc:Bounds x="96" y="16" width="80" height="48" /> </bpmndi:BPMNShape> <bpmndi:BPMNShape bpmnElement="_3" > <dc:Bounds x="208" y="16" width="48" height="48" /> </bpmndi:BPMNShape> <bpmndi:BPMNEdge bpmnElement="_1-_2" > <di:waypoint x="40" y="40" /> <di:waypoint x="136" y="40" /> </bpmndi:BPMNEdge> <bpmndi:BPMNEdge bpmnElement="_2-_3" > <di:waypoint x="136" y="40" /> ...

So.. we have a way of looking at business processes and a way of specifying them..

jBPM project
Open-source business process management
Embeddable, lightweight Java process engine, supporting native BPMN 2.0 execution
Eclipse-based and web-based editor
Pluggable persistence and transactions (JPA / JTA)
Pluggable human task service based on WS-HumanTask
Management console (process instance management, task lists, task form management, and reporting)
History logging (querying / monitoring / analysis)
Etc..

jBPM application architecture Core Services Business Analyst End User Developer Rules Core Engine Guvnor Repository Eclipse Editor Web-Based Designer History Log Task Service jBPM Console Your Application Your Services

BPM, BPMN 2.0 and jBPM
What does jBPM Designer do?
Demo
Summary

jBPM 5 Designer
Integrated with Guvnor
Versioning, storage and deployment
Embeddable (in your own application)
includes a javascript interface
JSON used for communication
Targets business users
Allows users to focus on process creation
BPMN 2.0 web editor
Creates fully executable BPMN
Supports the jBPM BPMN subset

jBPM Designer Features 1. Shape repository panel 2. Canvas 3. Properties panel 4. Toolbar 5. Footer 6. Process information

Designer: Shape Menu 1. Connection section 2. Morphing section

Designer: Task Form Generation
Automatic generation of forms for human tasks
Using defined process variables,
human task data I/O parameters and associations
(HTML/Javascript) Source immediately available
Generated forms are stored in Guvnor
All forms are fully usable inside jBPM console
Each form includes basic JavaScript form validation
à à

Business analyst stuff
Obligatory introduction to project
Demo!
Summary (AKA The End)

The Slide that you guys look at while I switch to the demo! Bonus: how many (full or partial) circles are on this slide?

Demo: Employee Evaluation
1. jbpm-installer
+ latest version of Designer
+ latest version of Guvnor
2. Start up installer
(JBoss AS7 + Guvnor + Designer + Console)
3. Create process in Guvnor/Designer
Import real process...
4. Save process
5. Run process!

Summary

How do we keep them busy?
BPM & BPMN 2: Business Process Modelling
“Go work on the Business Process!”
jBPM: how to implement an analyst’s work
Process engine that executes the BPMN
jBPM Designer: “Look at what you can do!”
BPMN process creation and modification
Integration with Guvnor:
Versioning, storage and deployment

Q&A
Drools/Guvnor homepage
http://www.jboss.org/drools
jBPM homepage
http://www.jboss.org/jbpm
Source code:
http://www.github.com/droolsjbpm
Designer: http://www.github.com/tsurdilo/process-designer
Download this presentation
http://www.jboss.org/drools/presentations
Twitter: @geoffreydesmet & @marcorietveld
Google+: Geoffrey De Smet & Marco Rietveld
IRC: #drools, #droolsdev and #jbpm on Codehaus

Image sources
http://images2.visual-paradigm.com/bpva/tutorials/businessprocessmodeling_screenshots/31_complete_bpd.png
http://mainthing.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/battleship-en.png
http://www.slideshare.net/krisverlaenen/jbpm5-argentina-workshop
JBPM online documentation: http://docs.jboss.org/jbpm/v5.2/userguide/

2012 02-04 fosdem 2012 - guvnor and j bpm designer

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2012 02-04 fosdem 2012 - guvnor and j bpm designer Presentation Transcript