What are the recommended steps for integrating JWS into a LAMP stack with or without JBoss?

[Jim Harris-3]

Hello.

 

Background:

 

I am leading an IT Project to develop a new application for MN DOT (a not-for-profit government agency of the State of Minnesota) called IAS (Independent Assurance System) that is a more-or-less ordinary, small web-based app. See atch ERD (PDF).

 

I have completed developing (using LAMP - Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) a very simple "Proof-Of-Concept" (POC) version of the first two iterations/increments of IAS, and our customers want an integrated Workflow System: A workflow engine to allow Workflow functions to be part of IAS, plus a GUI Workflow editor (preferably separate) to define and maintain the workflow components. I am interested in the approach that would use a GUI XPDL editor like Together, which I found as Enhydra JaWE http://www.enhydra.org/workflow/jawe/index.html before it linked to your WWW site, and before that I found JPEd http://www.jped.org/ 

 

====> I found the free/community version of the Editor and Server, but the Server at least on Windows is "nagware". Can we actually use it in production (on a Linux Server), and if yes, how do we shut off the nag window? Would there be a license fee for MN DOT?

 

====> We want to "fully integrate" the Workflow Engine running our XPDL Workflow on the same server (computer) as the IAS Web Server (Apache with PHP and/or J2EE and JBoss), so that (a) an Action a User takes on one of our web pages (e.g. they click an HTML link or push a button) causes the Workflow Server to recognize the Action and process it according to the current Workflow, and (b) a Step in a Workflow will e.g. present a specific IAS web page with some variables already loaded, or the Workflow will directly read or write the IAS database.

 

Note: Eventually, the IAS database will be in Oracle, so I will need to learn how to replace MySQL with Oracle in all the above, but I thought it would be easier with MySQL. If you think it's easier with Oracle, let's just move to Oracle now. I design and work with Oracle databases and connections a lot, so I shouldn't have too much trouble doing this part. In fact, I designed and verified the Data Model (see atch ERD) using Oracle Designer, and I have already generated the Oracle DDL (SQL) scripts, used them to build the running Oracle instance, and edited them to run likewise under LAMP and thereby built the matching MySQL database. Both databases are working perfectly.

 

 

Our request:

 

====> Please point us to the recommended method of installing and integrating the Workflow Server Community Edition in our environment. Would you use JBoss? Why or why not? For the recommended method, please point us to all the files (software and documentation) we should use.

 

If this information is clearly available on one of your WWW sites, I am sorry I missed it, and please point it out to me. If it is not, you may want to make it more clearly available.

 

Finally, as we learn more and want to make enhancement requests or other improvement suggestions, documentation help, bug reports, etc., where do we submit those?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Sincerely,

 

Jim Harris

 

James R. Harris, Information Architect, MS 240
Office of Information and Technology Services
MN Dept. of Transportation
395 John Ireland Blvd., St. Paul MN 55155-1899
jim.harris@...
Phone/Voice-Mail: 651.366.4045  651.366.4111 Fax
Mgr.: kimberly.nelson@... 651.366.4068
"Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work
not done, is essential."   -- The Agile Manifesto

 

 

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