JBoss Developer Studio 4.0 - how to add tech preview BPEL tooling

I mostly use the JBoss Developer Studio which integrates all my JBoss Tooling in a painless Eclipse experience.

I wanted to make use of the technical preview tooling that is provided by JBoss which is tooling for leveraging the yet to be fully supported features in their products. One of these is the BPEL project Riftsaw, integrated into the JBoss SOA-P product as a tech preview. The tooling can be found in a special update site:

Help -> Install New Software... -> in the 'Work with:' window add url http://devstudio.jboss.com/updates/4.0/techpreview -> add user and password found in the documentation to access the JBoss Developer Studio update site (http://devstudio.jboss.com/updates/4.0) -> select JBoss BPEL Editor

Once this finishes and restarts JBoss Dev Studio you will be ready to go!

JBoss Operations Network (JON) 4.2.1 - Fedora 14 setup tips

I was installing the newest JBoss ON on my Fedora 14 laptop and ran into the following when trying to configure postgresql.conf to provide a larger memory segment:

FATAL: could not create shared memory segment: Invalid argument
DETAIL: Failed system call was shmget(key=5432001, size=88358912, 03600).
HINT: This error usually means that PostgreSQL's request for a shared memory segment exceeded your kernel's SHMMAX parameter. You can either reduce the request size or reconfigure the kernel with larger SHMMAX.

Turns out you can adjust your kernels shared memory allocation size by using the following command (I upped mine from standard size to the numbers below):

# enter in a console as root the following to up the 
# allowed shared memory.
#
$ echo 88358912 > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax


# now we can start postgresql.
#
$ service postgresql start

# to allow postgresql service to start automatically
# on boot, you need to put this in the file 
# /etc/syscntl.conf
#
kernel.shmmax = 88358912

The following problem I had with the default configuration was that the gui pgAdminIII interface for postgres would not connect due to 'ident' authentication setup. The hint is to modify the authentication mechanism to md5 as follows:

# in your database directory, mine being /var/lib/pgsql/data,
# you will find a file called pg_hba.conf. This needs to be 
# modified to use 'md5.'
#

# TYPE  DATABASE    USER        CIDR-ADDRESS          METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all         all                               md5
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all         all         127.0.0.1/32          md5

The rest of the online documentation will work just fine.

Open Source Expert Panel - Wikileaks gone viral?

I just submitted the following Dutch language article for the opinion section Open Source for the on-line Computable.nl. I just needed to get this off my chest as it has been bugging me for awhile now.

Wikileaks gone viral?

Wat is er aan de hand met de wereld? Waarom denken mensen dat 'gratis' een vrijbrief is voor buitensporig menselijk handelen? Zijn er geen wetten waar we ons aan moeten houden of willen we ze selectief gebruiken als het zo uitkomt?

Wikileaks werkt volgens het principe dat alles open source is, óf zou moeten zijn. Ongeacht de gevolgen... Het maakt niet uit dat iemand moet betalen voor het overtreden van de wet, zolang het maar niet de organisatie is die de informatie publiceert.

Er bestaat Wikileaks, Openleaks, en nu zelfs Anonleaks. Maar laten we ze voor het gemak '*-leaks' noemen.

Mogen wij als IT-professionals informatie van werkgevers meenemen ongeacht welk contract of NDA is ondertekend? Bankiers, advocaten, militairen, al deze mensen ondervinden wel wat de gevolgen zijn, maar de '*-leaks' organisaties blijven vooralsnog buiten schot.

Wat zou er gebeuren als de IT-professionals informatie van werkgevers meenemen? Na afloop van een IT-project dump je alle codes en documenten op het web. Is dat hoe wij streven naar een perfecte wereld?

Waar zal het ophouden? Waar zal het '*-leaks' toe leiden? Is dit open source gone viral?

------------------------------------------
Update: Article can be found here but they 'edited' the title: Open Source gone viral?
------------------------------------------

Expanded this into an English version and submitted to Opensource.com.




Open source gone viral?

What has happened to the world? Why do people think that it is a free-for-all and there are no repercussions to our actions? Are there no laws that have to be followed or do we try to apply them selectively to others as needed?


Wikileaks works on the theory that everything is open source, or
should be. As if there are no consequences... it matters not that someone will have to pay for breaking the laws, as long as it is not the organization
that publishes the information.


We have Wikileaks, Openleaks, and even Anonleaks. Let's call them '*-leaks' to keep it simple.


May we as IT specialists take any information with us from employers no
matter what contract / NDA is signed? Bankers, lawyers, military, it
does not seem to matter who you are. These people are finding out that
there are repercussions but the *-leaks seem to be dodging all responsibility so far.


What if we as IT professionals all did this? Just working on our ICT
projects, leave at the end and dump all code/docs associated with the
projects onto the web. Is this how it should be in a perfect world?


Will it stop? Where does this lead? Is this Open Source gone viral?

JBoss jBPM 5.0 released - time to start taking your first steps

BPMN2 Designer

The project was released officially today, JBoss jBPM5 is here! It has been a work of migrating jBPM3 + jBPM4 + DroolsFlow functionality into one mainstream BPM project at JBoss.org.

Installing GWT Console

Let's take a look at the installation process and see what we are getting here from the new release. I just downloaded the jbpm-5.0.0-installer-full.zip from the jBPM project Download section. These are pre-built components that provide the setup you need to get going, just unzip and make use of the provided Ant script. What is that all about you ask? Well, taking a closer look (just showing some of the interesting ones listed, try it yourself for the complete list of choices):

$ ant -p
Buildfile: build.xml

Main targets:

Other targets:

 install.demo
 install.designer.into.jboss
 install.drools-eclipse.into.eclipse
 install.eclipse
 install.guvnor.into.jboss
 install.jBPM-eclipse.into.eclipse
 install.jBPM-gwt-console.into.jboss
 install.jBPM.runtime
 install.jboss
 install.reporting.into.jboss
 start.demo
 
# As I don't want to download and/or install another eclipse, I will avoid the install.demo.
# The nice part is that this is all installed relative to your jbpm path by default, giving
# you a self contained playground. See the build.xml for exact details.
#
$ ant install.jboss

$ ant install.jbpm.into.jboss

Guvnor repo

At this point I jumped over to my eclipse to setup the jBoss server and started it there. Just follow the provided documentation that I downloaded and unzipped. In jbpm-docs/* you will find all you need for the demo setup.

Process repo!

I just wanted to pull in a conversion tool project I have handy and see what the new jBPM5 can do. I have provided a few screen shots of my walk around the tooling.

There is a shot of the Guvnor repository where you can store your processes as project artefacts, the jBPM Eclipse Designer tooling with a BPMN2 process and a quick look at the new GWT admin console including its installation script.

There is so much more that I don't have the room here to show you, so grab the installer, docs and get going! Now it is time for you to take jBPM5 out for a spin!

Eclipse Helios and JBoss Tools from Eclipse Marketplace missing jBPM designer tooling

I mostly use the JBoss Developer Studio which integrates all my JBoss Tooling in a painless Eclipse experience, so it has been some time since I looked at a vanilla Eclipse version.

Since I have heard a lot about Eclipse Marketplace I thought I would install Eclipse Helios and try to work on my jBPM Migration project as a test. After the installation I went to the Eclipse Marketplace:

Help -> Eclipse Marketplace...

I installed Git, Subversive and JBossTools, but when I imported my project and tried to view a jBPM process I suddenly only have an XML viewer and not the usual jBPM Graphical Process Designer.

It appears that the feature org.jbpm.gd.jpdl.feature is missing from the tooling there.

To fix this we need the jBPM3 features, that can be found by installing new Eclipse software as follows:

Help -> Install New Software... -> (in pulldown menu select jbosstools updates development site) -> (in window appears) All JBoss Tools 3.2.0 -> open this and select jBPM3 Tools Runtime

Once this finishes and restarts Eclipse you will be ready to go!

jBPM Migration Tool project - quickstart setup

It seemed like a good idea to provide some simple instructions to get you started with the migration tooling in its current state. Even though they are really simple tests, you can help provide feedback by being able to run your own process definitions through the tooling in the near future when we get a bit farther along.

The first steps are described here in the quickstart wiki for cloning the code base and maven building it all.

After that you want to have a way to click on a jBPM 3.2 (jPDL) process definition and then convert it to a BPMN2 compliant process definition. You need to have a run configuration in you Eclipse for this so pull down the menu that is circled and select 'Run Configurations...':

 

This will allow you to select 'XSL' as shown and add a 'New' configuration:

We need to then start with the 'Main' tab, giving this a 'Name', selecting a 'Variable' called 'resource_loc' which allows you to select your process definition file to migrate and 'Add Files' to provide the migration stylesheet as shown:

Next you want to configure the 'Output' tab with an output location and file name, here shown in the target directory. It is handy to have the output formatted and opened on completion so these boxes need to be checked:

For completeness, here is shown the processor and version we are using:

To have this configuration appear in your 'Run' menu, just check the 'Run' box in the 'Common' tab as shown here:

This setup should allow you to select a jBPM process definition and convert that jPDL based file to a brand shiny new BPMN2 compliant process definition (some day soon we hope anyway)!

At this point it is a very trivial tool, expanding as we move forward to encompass more and more jPDL elements. Note also that location information is not yet been taken into consideration, so once you convert your definitions, you will have to pull them out of the top left corner of your viewer/editors the first time you open them. We will fix that soon...

Please feel free to provide feedback, process definitions you want tested, and comments as we move forward.