Eric D. Schabell: March 2011

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

JBoss Developer Studio 4.0 - how to add native BPMN2 editor

I mostly use the JBoss Developer Studio, which is free now! This will integrate your JBoss Tooling in a painless Eclipse experience.

Sometimes we need or want to play with some extra features, like the newest BPMN2 native Eclipse editor. This was the case with the BPMN2 native Eclipse editor project I needed for my jBPM Migration Project. Here are the steps to integrate this tooling, which requires Graphiti as a dep first and then the tooling project itself:

Graphiti project dependencies
Help -> Install New Software... -> in the 'Work with:' add the Graphiti update site (http://download.eclipse.org/graphiti/updates/0.7.1/) -> select Graphiti (Incubation) + Graphiti SDK (Incubation) -> (after deps and agreement it is a go for install)

Once this finishes and restarts JBoss Developer Studio you will be ready to install the native BPMN editor in Eclipse: 



BPMN2 native Eclipse editor
Help -> Install New Software... -> in the 'Work with:' add the BPMN2 native editor update site (see comments below for updated link) -> select BPMN2 Editor + Uncategorized -> (after deps and agreement it is a go for install)


Once this finishes and restarts JBoss Developer Studio you will be ready to use the native BPMN editor in Eclipse. 
Looking to Automate your business?

Other options

In the past we have outlined the use of JBoss BPM and rules tooling for other versions of JBDS:

Saturday, March 19, 2011

jBPM5 Roadshow - touring the Netherlands

Monday, 14 March was the first ever jBPM5 Roadshow which landed in the Netherlands, featuring Kris Verlaenen and two sessions. This idea was born with the release of the JBoss jBPM5 project and a need to spread the word on the next generation of open source BPM.

Initially we were planning to have an public session but there were some holidays (Carnaval is pretty big here in the southern part of the Netherlands) which meant most people would be otherwise occupied. We plan to hold such a session in the near future for a wider audience, so watch for the announcements.

We started at one of the most pervasive and celebrated commercial users of JBoss BPM tooling with a comprehensive session with most of the key players in the organization (Architects, Process Architects, Information Analysts and developers). This session started with an overview of the solutions that have been implemented and issues they were interested in, followed by Kris Verlaenen covering these topics in depth:
  • where jBPM is going
  • BPMN2
  • jBPM5
  • flexible and adaptive processing
  • the future roadmap
There were several interesting demo's with the tooling, both developer and business oriented, being showcased. There were great discussions with regards to the round-tripping capabilities provided by jBPM5 BPMN2 tooling and the business oriented web tooling. All in all, a very good session that captured their imagination and got the creative juices flowing within the various team members.

Later in the evening we were able to secure a session with a partner that has offices local to the morning session. They were more than glad to host the session and we had a packed room with not only developers, but consultants, analysts and project managers that were very interested in this JBoss BPM tooling session.

We will be coming soon to the rest of the Benelux, so watch for the announcements as this is one Roadshow you don't want to miss!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

JUDCon 2011 - jBPM migration tooling talk accepted


It all started with a session submission to JBoss World 2011, that got bumped to the JUDCon 2011 committee for evaluation and today we got the response:

"The session topic 'jBPM migration tooling - no one is left behind' has been accepted for JUDCon 2011 in Boston."

Registered and ready to go, watch for JUDCon 2011 conference updates and see you there!

jBPM migration tooling - no one is left behind
This session will outline the status of our jBPM migration tooling project (as found in the projects repository jBPM SVN). We will take a look at the background of jBPM 3 process projects and how we plan to help you migrate to jBPM5. 

We will start by providing you with 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.

Finally we will demo the existing tooling on an actual existing enterprise jBPM project. This will provide you with a real life scenario to take home as an example for your own BPM projects.

Update: agenda is online now.

Friday, March 11, 2011

JBoss World 2011 - Pioneering a path to the future with JBoss BPM

Back in October 2010 we submitted a session for JBoss World 2011, which we reported back in January 2011 as being pushed into the JUDCon 2011 conference. Well, good news, we are back into the JBoss World 2011 with this session from my previous employer!

I would like to thank the SNS Bank for making this possible and for being a great reference over the years. Even though I moved on to JBoss at Red Hat, they always make me feel at home when I am on site.

If you get the chance to join us at JBoss World 2011 in Boston, MA on May 3-5, please stop by and catch this session on the award winning work that SNS Bank has been doing with Open Source JBoss products. Both Michel de Blok and I worked on the solutions to be presented. He brings great depth and experience from implementing JBoss products so you won't want to miss the chance to ask a few questions at our session!


Pioneering a Path to the Future with JBoss BPM

Michel Blok — Senior Software Engineer, SNS Bank

Eric Schabell — JBoss Solution Architect, Red Hat

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 toward 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 business process management (BPM).
In this session, SNS Bank’s Michel Blok and Red Hat’s Eric Schabell will:
  • Take attendees through the history of SNS Bank, laying the groundwork for the vision and strategy for choosing JBoss open source solutions
  • Explain the move from a traditional bank to a modern Internet bank providing innovative selling channels
  • Describe the existing architecture, detailing the impact this move has had on existing IT systems and the migration efforts to position open source solutions
  • Provide a closer look at the lessons learned along the way, giving 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

Monday, March 7, 2011

Open Office impress - turn off first character auto correct capitalization

This was most annoying and I found myself spending some time ever few months trying to remember how to turn off this auto correction feature. Now for posterity:

OpenOffice Impress menu:
Tools  -> AutoCorrect options -> Options (select tab) -> uncheck 'Capitalize first letter of every sentence'

Now you can move on with your slides...

Thursday, March 3, 2011

JBoss SOA-P 5.1 workshop - impressions of Stockholm, Sweden

Jeff DeLong lectures
Red Hat JBoss provided a four day training in Stockholm, Sweden from 28 Feb - 03 Mar for a mixed group of partners (12x) and Red Hat JBoss'ers (4x) working in depth with the latest release of JBoss SOA-P 5.1.

This workshop included some technical previews of components that are coming down the JBoss projects pipeline and will be eventually included in the product.

These projects provide choreography, bpel, code generation, architect process tooling and a service repository for your soa artifacts:
The course covered the following topics and is a great way to scale up our partners on the technical details involved with implementing SOA-P solutions:
Captivated crowd

Day 1
  • Soa introduction
  • Soa development process overview
  • Business analysis
  • Architecture modeling
Day 2
  • Service oriented analysis
  • Overview web service standards
  • Service oriented design
  • ESB actions
  • ESB transactions
  • Snow and even a day of sun!
  • ESB web services
Day 3
  • Service development - entity services
  • Introduction to JBoss BRMS
  • Service development - task services
  • Service orchestration 
    • intro BPEL / Riftsaw
    • BPEL basic activities
    • BPEL msg data and correlation
    • BPEL control flow and fault
    • Culture trip to the Ice Bar
    • orchestration services
Day 4
  • Routing
  • Soa security
  • Complex event processing
  • Service deployment
  • Service monitoring
Many labs and hands on time spent during the week which is not for the beginner as you dive deeply into the JBoss ESB, Web Services, code generation, project wizards, choreography, BPEL, etc. All this is tied into a complex but complete running case study that ties it all nicely together.

Thanks to Jeff DeLong for the work he put into designing a top notch workshop and I hope we will be able to roll this out to our EMEA partners as well soon!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

JBoss Developer Studio 4.0 - how to add native BPMN editor / Enterprise Architect Savara 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 native BPMN Eclipse tooling and the Enterprise Architect Savara project tooling that is provided by JBoss. There are two steps to adding this tooling:

BPMN native Eclipse tooling
Help -> Install New Software... -> in the 'Work with:' select the Helios update site or add it (http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios/) -> select SOA Development -> select BPMN Project Feature -> (after deps and agreement it is a go for install)

Once this finishes and restarts JBoss Dev Studio you will be ready to use the native BPMN editor in Eclipse. But there is more, we want the Savara project tooling so we do the following:






Savara tooling
Help -> Install New Software... -> in the 'Work with:' select the JBoss tools update site or add it (http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable/helios/) -> select JBoss Savara Tools Feature -> select pi4soa Core -> (after deps, agreement and accept unsigned content it is a go for install)

Once this finishes and restarts JBoss Dev Studio you will be ready to go with both BPMN native editor and Enterprise Architect Savara project tooling!
Looking to Automate your business?

Other options

In the past we have outlined the use of JBoss BPM and rules tooling for other versions of JBDS: