Alex,
to be honest, don't know much about ODE. I know ODE is BPEL engine...and
BPEL is used for orchestration of WebServices.
On the other hand, Shark is XPDL engine which means it supports both
Manual and Automatic tasks.
Manual tasks are assigned to humans. There is typically a
worklisthandler application written on top of the shark...and when user
logs in he sees his worklist with all the tasks he can execute. Tasks
are distributed to the users based on XPDL and implementation of
Assignment API plug-in component.
Automatic tasks are executed by the engine itself...and these tasks can
be anything you can write in your Java class (like communicating with
WebServices, sending an email, accessing database, interpreting script,
performing XSLT, ....)...and parameters for such activities are also
defined by XPDL.
One of the possible synergies is to use Shark to executes processes
triggered by ODE's call to a particular WebService (typical back-office
scenario).
The ODE users could think about using Shark for building task list
applications for the human related workflows...and Shark users can think
of using ODE to perform an actions that result from some human action.
e.g. human gets task to find some information on a net and enter it into
the workflow...he enters some parameters in the application and
completes the task...the next task could be automatic one that passes
this data to ODE which orchestrates with a certain web services and gets
back the result...result is filled back in shark's workflow...and so on
As I said, don't know too much about ODE and BPEL in general...we come
from XPDL world :-)
Greetings,
Sasa.
Alex Boisvert wrote:
Sasa,
Where do you see the synergies between Shark and Ode? i.e., How would the
respective communities benefit?
alex
On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 5:00 AM, Sasa Bojanic <[email protected]>wrote:
Dear All,
I've already posted an email to incubator's list asking for a
champion/sponsor for moving Shark project to Apache.
I communicated with Matthieu Riou and he suggested ODE could be a sponsor
for this project and told me the best way would be to start discussion on
this list.
Let me repeat what I already posted to incubator list:
Enhydra Shark workflow engine is a project currently hosted on ObjectWeb (
http://shark.objectweb.org/)
It is the most popular open-source java workflow engine completely based on
WfMC standards.
It uses XPDL1.0 as its native workflow process definition language.
It can be embedded into other Java applications (Swing, Console, ...) or
can be used as a server through WebService, EJB, CORBA, ...
Shark's modular, plug-in architecture makes shark suitable for integration
into different kind of projects.
It is a mature project started 5years ago, has a significant community and
more than 100000 downloads on ObjectWeb and almost 10000 posts on mailing
list. It is widely used all around the world in production, typically
integrated into different kind of applications, from DocumentManagement and
government applications up to applications for special purposes like bank
services, HR, Help desk, ... and in many, many others
Our goal is to move the core shark components to Apache. We should have no
problems with CLAs since these components are developed only by our core
developers.
We would like to continue with Shark development on Apache by re-factoring
Shark kernel's code and other major components to support XPDL2.1
specification.
Attached is an initial version of SharkProposal....Please feel free to ask
any question.
Greetings,
Sasa.
