MINERVA: Model drIveN and sErvice oRiented framework for the continuous business process improVement & relAted tools

 

Tools Dimension / Eclipse iS4BPe plug-in 

Overview

The iS4BPe (insert Services for BP execution) plug-in has been developed specifically to be integrated into the Eclipse MINERVA design distribution, to insert into the file corresponding to the BPMN2 model (XPDL, BPEL or BPMN2) the services invocation as defined in the generated SoaML model, to help make it executable. iS4BPe plug-in is a parser which uses jDOM to locate the activities in the input file that corresponds to each generated service in the SoaML file, adding the information generated on operations, parameters and messages types according to the tags defined by each language. It is part of the Eclipse MINERVA design distribution and because it was constructed for this environment, we can not guarantee its functioning in other Eclipse distributions. In Fig. 1 a general view of the Eclipse iS4BPe functioning is presented showing inputs and outputs, and the plug-in can be downloaded here

Fig. 1. Eclipse iS4BPe inputs and outputs

For each language we provide a generic insert which consists in taking the corresponding file as input and only adding information which is required by the associated standard, and nothing more. The output file can be then imported in a designer for each language which in general is provided by the associated process engine, to add the rest of the information as required by the engine. We also planned to provide for each language a specific insertion of definitions and elements for each of the selected process engines (Activiti, Bonita, Intalio), but as the time taken in the first one was more than expected, we decided to provide it for the BPMN2 engine, which is Activiti, and to leave the rest for future work.

 

 Author: Andrea Delgado 2010