SmartIT Expert Panel - Durf jij te besparen met SmartIT?

I just submitted the following Dutch language article for the opinion section on Smart IT. This is a section devoted to articles on savings by using IT in a smart way (i.e. intelligent).

Durf jij te besparen met SmartIT?
Hoe kun je direct een impact maken op je ICT kosten? Wil je niet af van je dure, proprietary, vendor-locked ICT componenten? Wil je niet tegen je baas kunnen zeggen dat je denkt een manier gevonden te hebben om over te stappennaar een kwalitatief goed component voor een aanzienlijk lager bedrag?
Waar wacht je nog op?
Niets is slimmer dan een inventarisatie te maken van je huidige enterprise software architectuur om er achter te komen dat er veel te besparen valt. Wat dacht je van al die gesloten software componenten met standaard 'licentie' kosten met ook nog supportkosten als bonus er boven op? Je ziet de laatste jaren dat bedrijven hun software architectuur lieten meegaan in de euforie van de groeiende economie. NIets was onmogelijk en met veel geld kwam veel tot stand.
Maar nu? We hebben het allemaal gemerkt. Ontslagen, krimpende budgetten, bezuinigingen op van alles wat met je eigen ICT uitgaven te maken heeft. Maar er is hoop. Er is ruimte voor degenen die op het punt staan om deze dure oplossingen weer eens onder de loep te nemen. Soms gedwongen door bezuiningen, maar bij anderen is het een manier zoeken om ruimte te scheppen voor projecten die nog moeten afgerond worden. Wat je hieraan kunt doen is de tijd nemen om Open Source oplossingen te vergelijken met deze dure componenten in je huidige software architectuur. Er zijn zoveel alternatieven voor alle lagen van je architectuur, van presentatie, data, transport, infrastructuur tot zelfs virtualisatie. Die Open Source componenten en oplossingen zijn er, vaak heb je zelfs meerdere componenten om uit te kiezen.
Maar dit is niet nieuw?
Wat is hieraan zo speciaal vraag je je nu af? Het is namelijk het Open Source model dat uitkomst biedt voor de SmartIT bedrijven. Je software architectuur wordt via een 'subscriptie' model gesupport in plaats van dure licenties. Open Source is gratis, zelfs als je enterprise versies gebruikt. Open Source bedrijven leven van de support contracten. Je neemt een dienst af in de vorm van een 'subscriptie' waarbij zij er dan voor zorgen dat je een organisatie hebt om te bellen bij problemen of vragen. Het verrassende hieraan is dat de kosten zo anders zijn in omvang. Veel bedrijven zijn hiermee bezig, veel bedrijven kloppen zelf aan bij de Open Source organisaties die dit model hanteren. Velen hebben het al ervaren, van groot tot klein kampen wij allemaal met de huidige ICT kosten problematiek.
Durf jij te besparen?

War belongs in a museum

Due to my own personal past I have an interest in the war history here in Europe that I am surrounded by. I have visited famous historical sites in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, but today I was in two different worlds in one day.

First was the stop at the WWII museum in Overloon, with an amazing collection of gear including a submarine, several planes and numerous armored vehicles. Much has been updated since my last visit so the trip was well worth it. What struck me most was the motto on the wall: "War belongs in a museum." Outside this location you will find the American flag flying, something that always does my heart a load of good!

The next stop was to a WWII German cemetery in Ysselstijn. This is by far the largest of all the cemeteries I have visited yet. Bigger than above Omah beach, La Cambe or Margraten. Here you find 31,000 graves spread out in a field that is not only large, but leaks out into the various side openings between the trees on the edge. This gives a strange impression as you see even more crosses through the trees no matter which direction you look. A sad, sad sight for anyone to see, no matter what country you come from.

JFall 2009 paper accepted: jBPM in action - past, present and future

The results are in on my submission to JFall 2009:

Original:

"Gefeliciteerd! Bij deze kunnen we je berichten dat je sessie is geselecteerd voor JFall 2009. Op dit moment werken wij aan het samenstellen van het definitieve programma en het plaatsen van de content op onze website."


English:

"Congratulations! Your session submission has been accepted for JFall 2009. At this moment we are working on generating the definite program and placing the content on our website."


See you there?

SOA Symposium Rotterdam 22-23 October

I will be at the SOA Symposium in Rotterdam, 22-23 October, check it out in the linked banners here on my site.

Going to be some good speakers, like Mark Little, CTO JBoss.

It will be jointly hosted with the International Cloud Symposium.

See you there?

jBPM paper nominated for award

This summer I had a chapter published in the 2009 BPM & Workflow Handbook.

Not only has this book reached the White House, become a point of discussion with President Obama, but it has now been nominated for the Global Awards for Excellence in BPM & Workflow 2009.

Fingers crossed!

JFall 2009 : jBPM in action - past, present and future

Having presented last year, I could not pass when the call for papers was made and I have submitted the following paper to JFall 2009:

Abstract
This session will take the visitor through the current status of jBPM in the field. It will make use of a real world use case to demonstrate the usage as seen over numerous jBPM projects. We will walk you through some of the issues with jBPM v3 that have led to some very interesting applications of the jBPM and finish this section up with a look at how best intentions have led to some possible best practices. We move on then to the future of jBPM and dig into the newest member of the jBPM family, v4. A serious development effort went into simplifying the API and we will provide an overview of these changes. The console was completely overhauled, a new process designer was created for inclusion into your eclipse IDE and last but not least we have a web based BPMN editor. A look at the development team and future project roadmap will be presented. Finally we wrap this session up with a look at migrations from the various versions of jBPM that we have been using in the near and distant past. Several scenarios are examined with some hints and tips provided to help you with your own migration planning.

Does this sound like something you would like to hear?

jBPM v4.1 on JBoss 5.0.0.GA - a look at the Signavio web process designer

Today at the opening of JBoss World 2009 the hard working jBPM team announced a new release of jBPM v4.1. I have previously taken a look at pre-released versions of the 4.x, but wanted to dive in again as they have added a web jPDL editor in conjunction with Signavio.

First again, examine the ant build after unzipping the downloaded tarball shows many new features are now available to setup this new jBPM. You can find the complete list of new features and fixes in the jBPM Jira, but note the Tomcat integration.

# Lets look at the build.xml options.
#
$ ant -p
Buildfile: build.xml
     [echo] database......... hsqldb
     [echo] tx............... standalone
     [echo] mail.smtp.host... localhost
     [echo] current dir = /home/mine/java/jbpm-4.1

Main targets:

 clean.cfg.dir                 Deletes the ${cfg.dest.dir}
 create.cfg                    Creates a configuration in ${cfg.dest.dir}
 create.jbpm.schema            creates the jbpm tables in the database
 create.user.webapp            Generates a configuration in dir generated/cfg
 delete.jboss                  Deletes jboss installation
 delete.tomcat                 Deletes tomcat installation
 demo.setup.jboss              installs jboss, installs jbpm into jboss, starts
                               jboss, creates the jBPM DB schema, deploys examples,
                               loads example identities, installs and starts 
                               eclipse
 demo.setup.tomcat             installs tomcat, installs jbpm into tomcat, starts 
                               tomcat, creates the jBPM DB schema, deploys 
                               examples, loads example identities, installs and 
                               starts eclipse
 demo.teardown.jboss           drops the jbpm db schema and stops jboss
 demo.teardown.tomcat          stops tomcat and then the hsqldb server if needed
 drop.jbpm.schema              drops the jbpm tables from the database
 get.eclipse                   downloads eclipse to ${eclipse.distro.dir}
 get.jboss                     Downloads jboss into ${jboss.distro.dir}
 get.tomcat                    Downloads tomcat into ${tomcat.distro.dir} if it 
                               is not available
 hsqldb.databasemanager        start the hsqldb database manager
 install.eclipse               unzips eclipse, downloads eclipse if it is not 
                               available in ${eclipse.distro.dir}
 install.examples.into.tomcat  deploys all the example processes
 install.jboss                 Downloads jboss to ${jboss.distro.dir} if its 
                               not available and then unzips jboss
 install.jbpm.into.jboss       Installs jBPM into JBoss
 install.jbpm.into.tomcat      Installs jBPM into tomcat
 install.tomcat                Downloads tomcat to ${tomcat.distro.dir} if its 
                               not available and then unzips tomcat
 load.example.identities       loads the example users and groups into the database
 reinstall.jboss               Deletes the previous jboss installation and re-installs
                               jboss
 reinstall.jboss.and.jbpm      Deletes the previous jboss installation and re-installs
                               jboss and installs jbpm in it
 reinstall.tomcat              Deletes the previous tomcat installation and re-installs
                               tomcat
 reinstall.tomcat.and.jbpm     Deletes the previous tomcat installation and re-installs 
                               tomcat and installs jbpm in it
 start.eclipse                 starts eclipse
 start.jboss                   starts jboss and waits till jboss is booted, then lets 
                               jboss run in the background
 start.tomcat                  Starts Tomcat and waits till it is booted, then lets 
                               Tomcat run in the background
 stop.jboss                    signals jboss to stop, but doesn't wait till its finished
 stop.tomcat                   Signals Tomcat to stop, but doesn't wait till its finished

The install is pretty straight forward, just need time to allow JBoss v5.0.0.GA and eclipse to download. Other than that, it was a breeze.

# Get some coffee or beer while waiting for this to finish!
#
$ ant demo.setup.jboss

Once this all completes you have an eclipse started and jboss server running in the background. Use the provided user documentation to complete the installation of eclipse (add GPDL plugins and jBPM runtimes). Then you import the examples and start touring!


I was interested in the new web designer so moved over to the web console.
Following the user documentation I log in and it is still looking just as good as the pre-releases, but now with some more features (see Jira).

Now we want to see what this new web editor from Signavio is all about.

# Need to point to the signavio-repo provided in the jBPM installation.
#
$ ant -Dsignavio.repo.path=/home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/signavio-repo 

install.signavio.into.jboss
Buildfile: build.xml
     [echo] database......... hsqldb
     [echo] tx............... standalone
     [echo] mail.smtp.host... localhost
     [echo] current dir = /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1

internal.set.signavio.repo.dir:
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/signavio-repo
    [mkdir] Created dir: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/signavio-unzip-tmp
    [unzip] Expanding: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/src/signavio/jbpmeditor.war 
            into /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/signavio-unzip-tmp
      [zip] Building zip: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/
                          signavio-unzip-tmp/jbpmeditor.war
     [copy] Copying 1 file to /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/src/signavio
   [delete] Deleting directory /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/generated/
                               signavio-unzip-tmp

install.signavio.into.jboss:
    [unzip] Expanding: /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/install/src/signavio/jbpmeditor.war 
            into /home/eschabel/java/jbpm-4.1/jboss-5.0.0.GA/server/default/
                 deploy/jbpmeditor.war

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 17 seconds

# And now we can load up the page in our browser.
#
http://localhost:8080/jbpmeditor/p/explorer

I opened a new jPDL project, drew a few things to make a simple empty process, and saved this to a file. Very nice stuff and BPMN 1.2 (with 2.0 on the horizon) too!

One small note, you will need to run this all with Java 1.6. I started with a Java 1.5 environment and that gave all kinds of problems with the web editor which was built with Java 1.6.

JBoss Drools in Rome

The second half of this week I spent in Rome teaching some local rules enthusiasts about the finer points of JBoss Drools.

There is much to see in Rome, but what posting would be complete without at least a picture of the Colosseum. I don't want to make you too jealous, but I spent almost every evening eating dinner (spaghetti and clams, see picture) with this as a backdrop. My hotel was 10 minutes walking distance from the Colosseum!

It is a two day course diving into the details of JBoss Drools v4.0.7 and held in a very beautiful old Rome apartment that functions as the Red Hat offices here. The course was over two days and contains the following topics with extensive technical labs for the students to complete:


Day 1

• Introduction to JBoss Drools
• The Drools rule language
• Domain specific languages
• Decision tables
• Business Rules Management System (BRMS)

Day 2

• The RETE Algorithm
• Advanced rule authoring
• Execution control
• RuleFlow
• Performance considerations & debugging

If you are contemplating a project with JBoss Drools in the mix, I would strongly recommend that you look into Red Hat training as this course provides a very good foundation. Upon completion you could even become the proud owner of the certificate stating your Drools expertise!

jBPM in Rome

Today we finished up the JBoss jBPM training course which took place in Rome, Italy. I was asked to fly in and teach this for some of the local enthusiasts here.

There is much to see in Rome, but what posting would be complete without at least a picture of the Colosseum. I don't want to make you too jealous, but I spent almost every evening eating dinner (spaghetti and clams, see picture) with this as a backdrop. My hotel was 10 minutes walking distance from the Colosseum!

The course covers jBPM v3.x in great detail, and as their was enough interest in the newer version I was able to impart some information regarding the direction jBPM v4.x has taken. It was a very beautiful old Rome apartment that functions as the Red Hat offices here. This is where the course was held, with a very nice balcony to take our breaks on (see picture). The course was over three days and contains the following topics with extensive technical labs for the students to complete:

Day1

• Introduction to jBPM
• Process modelling
  
• jPDL designer
• Deployment

Day2

• Client programming
• Context variables & expressions
• Advanced process modelling
  
• Task management
  

Day3

• Web console
• Persistence
• Integration & customization

The students included a business consultant and developers, so the mix was rather interesting. You can see that we even have jBPM chicks out there in the world!

If you are contemplating a project with jBPM in the mix, I would strongly recommend that you look into Red Hat training as this course provides a very good foundation. Upon completion you could even become the proud owner of the certificate stating your jBPM expertise!