Talk held at the JavaBin in Oslo on 4th of April 2017

1. Open source workflow and rule management with
Camunda
bernd.ruecker@camunda.com | @berndruecker | http://bernd-ruecker.com/

2. pay receive
shipment
place
order
I want to buy
something!
I am happy!

3. The internal view
receive
shipment
place
order
manual approval
in case of risky orders
risk
check
payment delivery

4. Requirements
receive
shipment
place
order
manual approval
in case of risky orders
risk
check
payment delivery
Long running,
requires state handling
Service collaboration,
potentially long running

5. How to implement this?

6. State in entity

7. Or a seperate state entity

8. State machine
Using Camunda, open source workflow engine: http://camunda.org/

9. Invoking logic

10. Visualization and persistent state
Relational DB

11. Visibility helps!

12. Some time ago…
Application
Processingnew
applications
CRM

13. Some time ago…
Application
Processingnew
applications
CRM

14. When does these things happen?

15. The sales report on Monday:

16. Alarming by
management attention

17. Alarming by
customer complaints

18. Same story using Camunda

23. GET /engine/default/incident/count
{
"count":1
}

33. Hot potato
issue handling

34. The 7 sins of workflow and Java
No engine Wrong engine
3
4
6
5
7
http://blog.bernd-ruecker.com/
2

35. The 7 sins of workflow and Java
Homegrown
engine
No engine Wrong engine
3
4
6
5
7
http://blog.bernd-ruecker.com/

36. The homegrown engine
©kallejipp/photocase.com
Own DSL, parsing, graphical representation,
modeler, persistence, escalation, version
management, tooling, …
Whole teams maintaining something that
always lacks behind

37. The 7 sins of workflow and Java
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
No engine Wrong engine Wrong usage
4
6
5
7
http://blog.bernd-ruecker.com/

38. Death by properties panel
Script:
Please enter your complex code here.
(Without IDE support of course!)

39. BPM Suites
By the way, we introduce an own
development approach, IDE, version
control, user management, reporting, …

40. Zero code & developers
We have a lot of
problems!
It totally sucks!
I hate BPM!

41. Bernd Rücker
Co-founder Camunda
> 10+ years workflow
http://bernd-ruecker.com/
bernd.ruecker@camunda.com
Camunda
Open source vendor
Berlin + San Francisco
> 60 employees
No venture capital
www.camunda.org

42. In Camunda you can specify flows programatically or graphically
Todo…

44. Proper testing – too!

45. Lightweight engine
Cockpit
Modeler
DB
Tasklist Custom App
Business
Analyst
Java API
Engine
REST API
End User
Developer
Operator

46. Requirements
receive
shipment
place
order
manual approval
in case of risky orders
risk
check
payment delivery
Long running,
requires state handling
Service collaboration,
potentially long running
Guidance for decision,
history

47. Decision Tables

48. Live Demo

49. Example of “classical” architecture
Node 2
JBoss, WildFly, WAS, … Node 1
Camunda
(Shared Process Engine)
Database
ProcessApplication1
(war)
e.g. „Procurement “
BPMN Delegates
Forms /
UI
ProcessApplication2
(war)
e.g. „Order Management“
BPMN Delegates
Forms /
UI
ProcessApplication3
(war)
reusable global processes
BPMN Delegates
Forms /
UI
Generic User Interface
(war)
task list, reusable global forms, …
Entities,
rules, …
Entities,
rules, …
Entities,
rules, …
Camunda Webapp
(war)
Cockpit, Tasklist, Admin
Load Balancer
Browser
Some service
BPM Service
(war)
customer specific
service - generic
Camunda REST API
(war)

50. Example of microservices architecture
Every microservice can decide autonomously
Make sense as soon as you have state
Engine must be
• easy to use
• developer friendly
also in the scope of microservices
• technically
• license model
Payment service
Order service
engine
engine
…
Inventory service
Shipping service
…
engine

51. Paymentservice
Microservice collaboration
Orderservice
Eventbus

52. Demo available on Github
Inventory
service
Payment
service
Order
service
Shipping
service
H2
Shop Monitor
Camunda
Webapp
on Tomcat
for demo in single Java VM for simplicity

53. Camunda community ecosystem
Testing
Spring Boot
Camel
Docker
Elasticsearch
Grails
PHP & C# client
and more: https://docs.camunda.org/manual/latest/introduction/extensions/

54. AT&T
More than 100 Customers
• Finance: Account Opening, Credit Card Provisioning, …
• Insurance: Insurance Policy Issue, Claim Settlement, …
• Telco: OSS, BSS, …
• Media: Digital Content Delivery, …
• E-Commerce: Order Execution, Purchasing, …

55. Customer Case Studies
https://network.camunda.org/whitepapers/

56. Slides online:
http://bernd-ruecker.com
Feedback:
http://bernd-ruecker.com/feedback
Camunda:
http://camunda.org/
Code online:
https://github.com/berndruecker/

57. Takeaways
• Almost any application
nowadays has (potentially) long
running flows
• Camunda can do the state
handling nicely for you
• The lightweight framework
allows best-of-breed and
modern architectures
• Graphical representation helps
to align people.
• It is a lot of fun!

58. The 7 sins of workflow
Zero-code suites
Homegrown
engine
Granularity
bloopers
BPM monolith Stakeholders
habitat violation
Over engineering
No engine Wrong engine Wrong usage
http://blog.bernd-ruecker.com/

59. Thank you! Any questions?