Intalio BPM suite provides enhanced Intalio | BPMS Works provides a complete solution for the implementation of runnable processes. Intalio is already on the market for several years and has attained a certain maturity. In this article I give a brief overview of the system.

Since mid-December published Intalio their product range on two separate sites. Intalio | Cloud and Intalio | Works . The Business Process Management System has been in the Intalio | Works to find. Intalio | BPMS Works is available in two editions: the free Community Edition and the paid Enterprise Edition. Both editions are complete open source products which differ significantly in functionality, unfortunately. There was also a Developer Edition. Over here is the new website to read any more (except for the description of the licensing model).

First, an overview of the Intalio | BPMS Works components:

The components of the Enterprise Edition are all optional. You pay in effect for the final integration of the components and for the support. There are three levels of support (Silver, Gold and Platinum), which differ mainly by different guaranteed response times for support requests. Additionally is an SAP Connector available at RFC, BAPI and IDOC to integrate into processes.

The Community Edition is the actual "core system" off. This lets you create complete processes with BPMN and integrate web services and databases. There exists a complete Web-GUI for Entanwender and one for administrators. If an ESB is already available (eg Sopera or Glassfish ESB) can also easily add other systems and protocols are integrated into the processes.

With the Enterprise Edition you have to consider well which optional components you want to shop. With an abundance of open source projects, some features are redundant. For example, the Alfresco content management as the main function, the Liferay Portal provides content but also in management. Generally, Alfresco and Liferay are still relatively large and again Extensive systems, if you want to use all features. Alfresco actually comes from the DMS and CMS corner. This tool is very strong and in my opinion the best available free to DMS. Liferay Portal is a classical system and supports JSR168 and JSR286. Since both independent projects are of course are always new features implemented and the functionality of both systems approaches at each other. With the systems their real strengths are still in their original functionalities have.

But now the core functionality of the Intalio | BPMS Works: Processes

In Intalio, processes can be implemented without any programming effort. This claim by now many of the vendors. Intalio when it really does work. That does not mean that one needs no IT skills. One has to with Web Services, XSD, XPath, WSDL, SQL, and so on are familiar. And as long as it manages with the TIBCO General Interface Builder, you need not program really.

The processes to be modeled with BPMN 1.2. As in the past include BPMN specification no executable semantics (with adoption of the Ultimate BPMN 2.0 will be the last change ) Have some information for later translation to BPEL is required. During the modeling I'm so far encountered no serious limitation of BPMN and the transformation engine does an excellent job. Nevertheless, one must be aware that differ markedly in some special cases, the flow structures in the BPMN and BPEL. Because BPEL is block-oriented and non-BPMN. A small example of the difference seen in the following process:

If this process is transformed to BPEL following happens:

Due to the block structure is not executed when task 4 1 AND 3 are completed. In the BPMN process model is executed Task 4 if task 1 and task 2 have been carried out. The data are available for processing in Task 4 are identical in both processes, because regardless of Task 3 Task 4, but the time and thus the entire duration of the process will deteriorate in the BPEL process. In BPMN, 3 and 4 can be processed in parallel, this is done sequentially in the BPEL.

Each process step in itself is implemented in Intalio as a Web service. This web can be accessed from outside. You can run as a process by WS-calling or individual task perform by WAS call.

The integration of Web services that are offered by third-party systems without problems in general. After importing the WSDL can access the service via drag and drop can be modeled in the process. The assign the input and output parameters for the Web service via a Data Mapper. Here, the data structures are adapted to each other visually and mapped. Transformations should be necessary, in graphical mapping XPath expressions. For very large data models (eg IDOC), the Data Maper but will quickly become confusing. Furthermore, can also be incorporated into the process database requests. To do this you must then at least be able to create SQL queries to the appropriate.

If users are to participate in the dialogue process can be modeled. Either through a graphical XForms Designer or the integrated Ecplise in TIBCO General Interface Builder . With the Interface Builder Ajax dialogs can be created. It is this all HTML objects. Plausibility checks for individual entries can be directly eigegeben about regular expressions (as for example in XSD files), or some standard expressions are voreingestellt.Eine validation across multiple fields (eg Field 1> Field 2) is unfortunately not possible without further notice. All fields can be created on a form later in the process are used as input or output. For this we can draw the forms by dragging and dropping into the process and the data are already available for the process. Also this manual task can also be assigned to a person or role.

A very interesting and somewhat hidden component that is also present in the community edition, is the Task Managament Process (TMP) in the Task Manager. The TMP manages all processes running on the Intalio. Here you can engage in the process of central processing. This should only experts, because the effect extends to the entire system. The TMP is itself a BPMN / BPEL process can be just like all other processes in the designer to edit. Thus, for example, various scenarios notification, logging mechanisms, or implement BAM functions centrally.

Conclusion:

Intalio BPMS is now a mature, which is not mentioned even in vain, Forrester & Co. is the only Open Source BPMS in the market, with regular observations. Although it cuts in a recent study by the Fraunhofer Institute did not do so well (see here ). But it was only the Community Edition and then tested two very large commercial BPM suites are compared. The Enterprise Edition would have done much better (in the study also mentioned). The Community Edition is in scope good for small businesses or prototypes used. In the middle class and beyond, you need some components of the Enterprise Edition (BRE, BAM, possibly portal) a BPMS to operate efficiently. The consulting market for Intalio is unfortunately still in German-speaking bit thin, but that will change determined in the coming months. There are ongoing projects with some major Intalio which the "early adopters" in Germany, can now gain experience Intalio.