Workflow Framework Comparison

Workflow / bpm have very short history. But now there a several mature frameworks you can use in open source world.

Today there are lots of projects talking about workflow. most of them have totally different domains. (ERP/CRM/internal) and in response there are lots of frameworks to solve this problem. Here is my experience:

OSWorkflow

The most simple workflow engine you could find. Although it seems a death project, It solved lots of my problems. Osworkflow is quite simple and flexible you can be reconfigured its persistence layer and easily integrate it with spring-hibernate couple. More over there are projects for this integration: spring-modules.

osworkflow is a human workflow engine in fact it is a simple finite state machine . but you can quickly extend and implement lots of this in it.

If you are looking for simple framework to manage state changes it is osworkflow.

Quite impressive workflow engine. its model is quite simple and effective. more over it has a simple editor to help you to model process on eclipse (use it only to model not to code !!!).

Although to use all of its functions you should use jboss or another AS . You can easily implement and replace its’ one or more modules (scheduling, persistence, transaction management) to simplify this dependency.

For me, only weak point is: This project has a dummy assignment (user-management) module. JBPM people already know and say this. So there are guides to replace this module. But it would be better if there is an alternative implementation running on LDAP.

More over this project have and integration project with JSF and SEAM if you consider.

JBPM is a really good choice if you are managing human workflows

There are two more sub project you should look at

Process Virtual Machine:

BPEL support really excited about them.

demo:http://docs.jboss.com/jbpm/v3/demos/movies/jbpm-overview.htm

Hopefully I’ll write about it more…

IBM process server

Not a framework but an application. If you are looking for solution, use SOA services and write graphical coding that is it. You can drag and drop lots. But an important point 6.0.2 running on JVM 1.4

IBM process Server or other process server like oracle and tibco should be preferred if you are dealing with integration and human wokflows at the same time.