Eric D. Schabell

Friday, October 9, 2015

Updated Modern BPM Data Integration with JBoss BPM Travel Agency


Some time ago we launched a rather expansive JBoss Travel Agency demo project to show some of the more interesting feature of JBoss BPM Suite.

We provided a collection of videos that not only show you how to install it, what the various rule and process artifacts are in the project, but we also walk you through the various paths you can take during actual use of the JBoss Travel Agency process.

The project continued to expand over time, adding on not just a bookings process, but also a payment process that included advanced features like compensation (rolling back bookings), integration of traditional web services in service tasks and a credit card fraud detection system.

We have showcased this project on several online webinars, including together with PEX Processing Network.

Continuing to expand and integrate data with
JBoss BPM Travel Agency using
JBoss Data Virtualizaiton
After that we decided to provide a reusable demo project you can easily spin up yourself to explore the details around how a JBoss BPM project would integrate with the microservices we migrated from existing classic web services with JBoss Fuse.

Finally, we put together an Ultimate Guide to JBoss Integration, where we looked at some of the more interesting products you can use to implement use cases where JBoss BPM integrates your various data needs.

The only thing missing in this discussion was a working example of data integration, where we are "...accessing data and functions from disparate systems to create a combined and consistent view of core information for use across the organization to gain necessary insights and improve business decisions and operations. This type of integration usually helps to accelerate development of business intelligence systems."

Submit a travel booking request.
As JBoss Data Virtualization (DataVirt) is ideally suited for this type of integration we went ahead an put together an example of this that is a fully integrated a working JBoss BPM Travel Agency with JBoss DataVirt virtualized data sources that allow us to gather both Flight and Hotel information.

We also use this integration to communicate our bookings data back to the correct systems of record that JBoss DV manages for us behind the scenes and provide a consistent view that is integrated into the JBoss BPM Suite BAM dashboard.

So what has been updated you ask?

JBoss DV provides a concise view of the Flight data.
Not so long ago Red Hat released JBoss DataVirt 6.2 product and we thought we would give you the latest version by upgrading the JBoss BPM Travel Agency project that showcases how a bookings process can survive a merger with another travel agency. The booking process can continue to run with no changes at all. The new data sources from the company merged with are integrated into the existing data sources with the help of JBoss DataVirt.

Interested in finding out more?

Just check out he project as described below, and take a look at the recorded webinar A Guide to Modern BPM Data Integration that will provide all the details around this project and a live run showcasing how it all works. Slides are also available from the webinar, free online.

Demo project

The project installs JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 with the JBoss BPM Travel Agency projects rules, process, forms and sub-flow. It then installs JBoss DataVirt 6.2 with several data sources setup to be used by our application.

JBoss DV provides overview of Hotel data.
To setup this project there are just a few simple steps to get going.

Installation

  1. Add products to installs directory.
  2. Run 'init.sh' or 'init.bat' file. 'init.bat' must be run with Administrative privileges.
  3. Start JBoss DataVirt Server with offset port with '-Djboss.socket.binding.port-offset=100'
  4. Flight bookings are tracked in BAM dashboard.
    Start the JBoss BPM Suite server, login, build and deploy JBoss BPM Suite process project at http://localhost:8080/business-central (u:erics/p:bpmsuite1!).
  5. Create custom Dashboard entry for monitoring the external JBoss DataVirt virtualized DB views:
    1. - select menus Dashboards --> Business Dashboards 
      
      - select Administration -->  External Connections 
      
      - select Create New Datasource and select radio box Custom Datasource
      
      - fill in form as follows:
      
          - Name: TravelVDB
      
          - Url:  jdbc:teiid:TravelVDB@mm://localhost:31100
      
          - DB Driver Class:  select Teiid
      
          - User:  teiidUser
      
          - Password:  admin_24
      
          - Test query:  select 1
      
      - select Check Datasource, if all goes well Save the configuration.
      
      - select in top left Workspace: 'Flight and Hotel Bookings'
      
      - these are the BAM dashboard views of the integrated data.
      
      - monitor for bookings when running process instances.
Hotel bookings finalized and displayed in BAM dashboard.
Once you are up and running just build the project in JBoss BPM Suite and run the process by submitting through the client web application at:

      http://localhost:8080/external-client-ui-form-1.0

Looking to Automate your business?
The process will now be using the various data sources and the BAM dashboard will provided a running live look at the data as fights and hotels are being booked by users of your process.

If you need some visual assistance you can watch the videos provided with the JBoss BPM Travel Agency that show you how to run through a valid travel booking.

We hope you enjoy this one too and feel free to browse for more at JBoss Demo Central.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Quick Tour #1: JBoss BRMS the Basic Install Project (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BRMS Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today the first in the series, we show you in under three minutes how to find, how to obtain and how to install the basic install project that is featured when working on the JBoss BRMS Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
    1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BRMS the Basic Install Project 
    2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BRMS product
    3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BRMS
    4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BRMS project
    5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BRMS
    6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BRMS project
    7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central
    Looking to Automate your business?

Monday, October 5, 2015

Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, we show you in under five minutes what is available to you in JBoss BPM Suite Business Central for use in the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central

Looking to Automate your business?

Friday, October 2, 2015

Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, we show you in exactly four minutes how to build and run a project in JBoss BPM Suite for use in the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central

Looking to Automate your business?

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, we show you in just over three and a half minutes how to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite for use in the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central

Looking to Automate your business?

Monday, September 28, 2015

Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, we show you in just under four minutes how to start your first JBoss BPM Suite project from the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central

Looking to Automate your business?

Friday, September 25, 2015

Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, we show you in just over two minutes how to install JBoss BPM Suite based on the easy install project for working on the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central
Looking to Automate your business?

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today another in the series, we show you in just five minutes where you can obtain the product JBoss BPM Suite for working on the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central

Looking to Automate your business?

Monday, September 21, 2015

How to setup JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 API (javadoc) documentation

Previously we presented an overview of the online JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 API documentation, but this is not the solution for the developer on the go at locations where connectivity might be an issue, right?

Well have no fear, you can now follow along and learn how to grab the correct version of the API documentation for JBoss BPM Suite 6.1.

As you know, the products at Red Hat are collected, tested and hardened from upstream community projects. JBoss BPM Suite is no different, being based on numerous sub-projects found in the Drools and jBPM communities.

At a point in time they produce a tagged version that is then channeled into our product quality assurance teams and productization teams. For JBoss BPM Suite this tag was called 6.2.x in the community.

The sub-project that provides you with all of the online documentation is found called droolsjbpm-knowledge which you can use GIT to clone locally as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/droolsjbpm/droolsjbpm-knowledge.git

Figure 1: need the
Final tag.
This gives you the main branch of current development, but we are looking for the product 6.1 related tag, so let's take a look:

$ git tag -l | grep 6.2

The results are a list of tags as shown in Figure 1, of which we are only interested in 6.2.0.Final, so we want to switch to that one as follows:

$ git checkout tags/6.2.0.Final

Now we move down into the KIE-API directory and build the API documentation as follows:

Looking to Automate your business?
$ cd kie-api

$ mvn javadoc:javadoc

The results will be found in the generated target directory and you can open the index.html file found as follows in your browser once the build is completed:

droolsjbpm-knowledge/kie-api/target/site/apidocs/index.html

You now have your very own copy of the JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 API documentation so you can get developing on your next JBoss BPM Suite application!


Friday, September 18, 2015

Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project (video)

With the announcement that we have updated the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit you might have noticed that a few quick tour videos were promised.

On that promise we are starting to deliver with a series of short and simple video stories.

Today the first in the series, we show you in under three and a half minutes how to find, how to obtain and how to install the basic install project that is featured when working on the JBoss BPM Suite Starter Kit.

We hope you enjoy this story and stay tuned for more...


Did you miss the other quick tour videos?
  1. Quick Tour #1: JBoss BPM Suite the Basic Install Project 
  2. Quick Tour #2: Where to get JBoss BPM Suite product
  3. Quick Tour #3: How to install JBoss BPM Suite
  4. Quick Tour #4: Start your first JBoss BPM Suite project
  5. Quick Tour #5: How to import a project into JBoss BPM Suite
  6. Quick Tour #6: Build & run a JBoss BPM Suite project
  7. Quick Tour #7: What's in Business Central

Looking to Automate your business?

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Gartner BPM Summit 2015 report from the trenches

It has been two years since I last attended the Gartner BPM Summit, so was rather excited to dive into the 2015 edition last week in Washington, DC.

Room keys!
Red Hat was present with a booth, great swag (room keys, stickers and neck pillows for your flight home) and a customer presentation.

The Healthesystems Story: Cutting Time to Market with Red Hat

For ten years, Healthesystems relied on two solutions for state agency reporting and vendor payment margins for workers’ compensation claims. Market competition and continuously changing government mandates led them to seek ways to consolidate business rules from the code and accelerate time to market. 

Healthesystems story live.
Healthesystems used Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite with Red Hat technology partner Open Source Architect to centralize their business rules and cut time to market from weeks to hours.

Speakers: Farhan Hussain , Sam Alexander


Again I was not able to attend many of the more interesting sessions that were blocked for vendors, even though I had a full conference pass. These sessions required pre-registration which ended up in my being rejected for admittance. Bummer as there were some really interesting sessions.
Nationals game.

The booth was manned by friends of mine in the US NE Solution Architect team, with customer meetings and dinners keeping us pretty busy the whole week. We even managed to sneak in a Washington Nationals baseball game one evening!

Red Hat booth.
The main focus if I had to mention a trend from the week was the focus on dynamic case management and BPM for improving customer experiences through better usage in the applications being developed.

The trend is to focus more on how BPM can transform your business by becoming a strategic part of the way one engages with customers throughout their business life cycle.

It is always a good time talking to the various, mostly higher level, BPM business users that attend this type of event.

I am looking forward to being back next year with more JBoss BPM Suite goodies to showcase for you.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Where to find JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 API (javadoc) documentation

One of the lines of questioning that is most often put to me when I am out and about speaking with JBoss BPM Suite practitioners involves the Application Programming Interface (API).

More simply put, they are looking for an overview of what the product offers to them when they are trying to build applications that are looking to interact with rules, events and processes from a development standpoint.

This also is of some importance when you are looking to migrate your existing applications from one version of JBoss BPM Suite to another, meaning you might have to modify your usage of the offered API as it evolves over time.

JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 API online documentation
This online documentation focuses on the interfaces you can work with in the product, better known as the Knowledge Is Everything (KIE) API and can be found at:


The overview here is easy to browse and provides you with the details you need to integrate your applications, start your processes, setup sessions, query details of your processes and much more.

The tagged version listed in the documentation online is based on the Open Source community versions that are marked as the starting point for Red Hat's product teams to start test & development on the following version of JBoss BPM Suite products. In this case, the tagged version led to JBoss BPM Suite 6.1 product.

If you are interested in having a copy of this documentation locally, we can show you how to setup them for your offline usage.
Looking to Automate your business?

No time like the present to get developing on your next JBoss BPM Suite application!


Monday, September 14, 2015

Red Hat Forum Benelux 2015 in Zeist

There is an event coming to the Benelux region, that's Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, that will be hosting Red Hat's most influential speakers.

Not only will Werner Knoblich, Senior VP & GM EMEA introduce Open Source as an innovative driver, but Rakesh Kumar, Managing VP from Gartner will lay out his vision for IT by the year 2017.

There will also be numerous sessions throughout the day that can be sorted into 4 tracks for you with amazing talented speakers. You don't want to miss this in Zeist, Netherlands on 15th of October so register now to enjoy tracks like these:

Technical Breakouts Track

08:45 - 09:45, JBoss - IoT Case
Start your day off right with a story by Geert Schuring, Senior Java Developer, Luminis.

Journey to the Cloud Track

13:15 - 14:00,  Journey to the Cloud, Geert Jansen, Manager Product Marketing, Red Hat

15:30 - 16:15,  Cloud Strategy Roadmap, Koen van Bakel, Solution Architect, Red Hat

Innovate & Saving Costs with JBoss Track

Looking to Automate your business?
14:00 - 14:45, Migrating Customer Case, Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO)  

14:45 - 15:30, Integration Customer Case, Carpass

Trending Topics Track

14:00 - 14:45, Enterprise Mobility, Joe O'Reilly & Bill Morkan, Solution Architects, Red Hat

15:30 - 16:15, Customer Case, EnterpriseDB

Check out the agenda for all the specifics and details, see you there?