Eric D. Schabell: January 2011

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Red Hat Virtual Conference featuring SNS Bank JBoss jBPM story

Today the Red Hat Virtual Conference kicked off, including a great story by Michel De Blok.

Bio Michel De Blok
Michel de Blok is a Senior Software Engineer at SNS Bank, an innovative Bank in the Netherlands.
He has over 10 years experience in Java and Java EE and focusses on integration solutions and
automated build and development tools. At SNS Bank he is responsible for the middleware layer
that enables legacy systems to be used by STP (Straight-Through-Processing) business processes,
which are implemented with the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.


Pioneering a path to the future with JBoss Business Process Management
As one of the top four Dutch financial institutions, SNS Bank in the Netherlands made a strategic decision to use technology to empower its customers online by fully automating its service and selling channels. In order to effectively move towards a full-scale Straight Through Processing (STP) experience, SNS Bank chose to achieve its goals by making use of Open Source Software, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and BPM.

This session will take us through the history of the SNS Bank, laying the groundwork as to their vision and strategy. This will explain the move from a traditional bank to a modern Internet bank providing innovative selling channels. We will walk through the existing architecture, detailing the impact this move has had on existing IT systems and the migration efforts to position open source solutions.

It goes without saying that these moves have had an effect on both the business departments and customers from the SNS Bank. The major change from branch offices to Internet selling channels required a new focus for the business departments to be able to provide effective services to her customers.

Finally, a close look at the lessons learned along the way will provide you with insight into a working open source STP BPM solution that is cost effective, reliable, flexible, and tailored to evolve with SNS Bank into the future.


Tuesday, January 25, 2011

jBPM Migration Tool project - first small steps

Before (jPDL 3)
As reported earlier, we have been sorting out some of the details on how we want to pursue our jBPM migration tool. We have been pushing forward and wanted to let you all know that we have a first simple version of the migration tool.
After (BPMN2)

It is just one use case and you can see from the 'Before' and 'After' screenshots that we have gone from basic jPDL 3 to BPMN2. There are unit tests in the code base that validate the incoming jPDL 3, transforms them to BPMN2 and then finally validates this output.

There is much yet to do, but the first baby steps have been taken. We will be quickly expanding from here. We will be tagging this version of the code soon and moving on in our roadmap, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Open Source Expert Panel - Open source tooling

I just submitted the following Dutch language input for the opinion section Open Source for the on-line Computable.nl.

Blije ontwikkelaars zijn productieve ontwikkelaars

Ontwikkelaars zoeken zelf naar tools waar zij graag mee willen werken. Het is immers zo te verkrijgen, en voor niets. Open source tooling is overal om je heen. Als je rondloopt in een ontwikkelafdeling en een lijst maakt van wat je allemaal tegenkomt bij ontwikkelaars, zul je zien dat niet iedereen van het gehele aanbod gebruikmaakt. Maar ik weet zeker dat het niet mogelijk is een ontwikkelaar te vinden die geen open source tool in zijn gereedschapskist heeft liggen. Het is niet van belang of je wel of niet met gesloten softwarecomponenten werkt maar het gaat er juist om wat wij als ontwikkelaars willen gebruiken om ons dagelijkse werk uit te voeren. Gelukkig is open source tooling geschreven door ontwikkelaars en dat is merkbaar. Het is 'van ontwikkelaars, voor ontwikkelaars!'

De beste tooling drijft dan naar boven qua functionaliteit, bruikbaarheid en vooruitstrevendheid. Dit soort tooling krijgt immers direct input van de gebruikers, en wel real-time via communicatiekanalen die 24/7 open zijn. Dit is haast niet bij te benen voor de statische gesloten tooling leveranciers. Het meest belangrijke resultaat van het gebruik van tooling die een ontwikkelaar zelf uitzoekt, is dat je dan een blije ontwikkelaar hebt. Want: blije ontwikkelaars zijn productieve ontwikkelaars!

Update: article published online here.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

JUDCon 2011 - jBPM migration tooling

We submitted a session to JBoss World 2011 in Boston last year when the call for papers came out, but sometimes you can't lose for winning. Yes, you read that right... can't lose for winning.

We got a rather special reply from the committee reviewing these sessions:

Thank you for your submission for the 2011 Red Hat Summit and JBoss World. Upon review of your “jBPM migration tooling - no one is left behind” session proposal, we regret to inform you that your proposal has been declined for the 2011 JBoss World. However, the JUDCon committee believes that this submission would be better targeted at JUDCon and we have auto-submitted it into the JUDCon Call for Papers. The second annual North America JUDCon will take place on Monday, May 2. You will learn if your submission was accepted at JUDCon in March.
Thank you for your interest in participating in this year's Red Hat Summit & JBoss World.

Best regards,

the Red Hat Summit & JBoss World team


Now ain't that just something?

That is the coolest 'reject' letter I have ever gotten! No room for our talk at JBoss World but we have a thing we like to call JUDCON and it has been forwarded to that committee. This is even better as I have been to the European version of JUDCon in Berlin and that is a great place to be for all your JBoss Developer needs.

Hope we make it to JUDCon 2011 at Boston in May! ;-)

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Adding Eclipse Marketplace to JBoss Developer Studio 4.x

I have been wanting to install m2eclipse plugins for my  JBoss Developer Studio Beta2 but keep getting the errors (see screenshot). A workaround and the future is the really sexy Eclipse Marketplace Client, but first we need to install it... here is how:

Help -> Install New Software... -> (pull down menu at top to select) Helios site -> (select from list that appears) General Purpose Tools -> Marketplace Client -> Next -> (it shows a dependency on Exquinox p2 Discovery) Next -> (accept license) Finish

This will install and then ask you to restart. The only bad thing I found is that I have all my non-provided JBoss Developer Studio plugins located in a separate directory that I can add or remove from my configuration. This installation is in the main JBoss Developer Studio plugins directory.

Enjoy your Eclipse Marketplace!

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Jazoon 2011 submisstion - jBPM migration strategies

Just submitted a talk to Jazoon 2011 for the Java and Beyond tracks from 21 - 23 June 2011:

Get your BPM Ducks in a row - jBPM migration strategies

With the recent shift to unify the JBoss projects DroolsFlow and jBPM4.x into jBPM5, we are all wondering what the impact could be to our existing BPM projects. What is new in jBPM5? What does one need to be aware of? What does one need to prepare in advance for a move to this new platform? All these questions and more will be discussed in this session.


First, we will take a look at what has happened historically within jBPM to get us where we are now, with jBPM3.x and jBPM4.x versions. We will discuss DroolsFlow in relation to the path towards jBPM5. Next we will take a look at the Request for Comments (RFC) that was put into the community and resulting architecture for the future of BPM within JBoss Middleware. This leads to a closer look at the resulting jBPM5 road map and how this will relate to the JBoss Enterprise BPM products moving towards the future.


Finally we will provide a plan for positioning your existing Enterprise jBPM projects for the eventual move towards jBPM5. This will cover the architectural layers involved, a look at the tooling being created for this and steps you can take to ensure a smooth transition moving into your jBPM future.