Jason,

Workflow engines are interesting.  It has been my observation that
A number of the approaches to design workflow engines in a rules 
language are simplified with the idea of time in the rules
engine at the condition evaluation level.  For example, in a
semi-english syntax:

// Monitoring for the success of a process
rule A {
when 
 xObj exists and
 wait 20 timeUnits for bObj to equal true
then
 do xObj.done()
}

or 
// Monitoring for failure of a process.
rule B {
 xObj exists and 
 if bObj does not exist in 20 timeUnits 
then
 do xObj.failed()
}

Or even better:
// Monitoring of a process for sucess or failure.
rule B {
 xObj exists and 
 wait 20 timeUnits for bObj to equal true
then
 do xObj.done()
else  // bObj does not exist or is not true
 do xObj.failed()
}

Without this idea of time the some workflow transitions
need to be written as a number of rules and maintained together.

Just my two cents,
Stuart



---- On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, Jason van Zyl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I am very interested in making a workflow engine (as I'm sure others on
> this
> list are interested in doing) and I wanted to know if anything has
> started
> in earnest based on drools?
> 
> I've a couple commercial packages that look really neat:
> 
> http://www.dralasoft.com/products/workflow/index.html
> http://www.insession.com/workpoint/workpoint.asp
> 
> I also know there is some code in the jakarta-commons but I'm sure it's
> well
> base on graph concepts. I haven't looked to closely though.
> 
> James, I know you were discussing somethings with Craig about JMS and
> Workflow so maybe you have a better idea.
> 
> In the project I work on (Tambora, tambora.zenplex.com) is basically all
> workflow and right now we are doing things in a fairly manual way so I
> am
> looking at a general workflow engine generally to make my life easier
> :-)
> 
> If anyone is thinking about this I'd love to hear your thoughts before I
> tear into it.
> 
> -- 
> 
> jvz.
> 
> Jason van Zyl
> 
> http://tambora.zenplex.org
> http://jakarta.apache.org/turbine
> http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity
> http://jakarta.apache.org/alexandria
> http://jakarta.apache.org/commons
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> drools-interest mailing list
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/drools-interest
> 
> 


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