People and Technology

Tom has a good post on the jBPM (JBoss workflow) community day held at the Guinness brewery in Dublin. Warning - slides may contain pictures of people drinking beer.

How to combine (jBPM) Workflow and (Drools) Business Rules - here’s the summary. Slideset is available on this blogpost.

• Workflow (e.g. JBoss jBPM) is great - it allows you to take spaghetti code and draw it as a workflow diagram (flowchart) so that it can be reviewed by the business (the nice people who pay our wages). You then attach standard (Java) actions to these steps.
• Only problem is when you come to a decision node (the one circled in red below): How do you decide to go left or right (in the workflow)? Normally this is coded in Java - good for us, but hidden from those nice business people (which means that this is more room for errors-in-translation).
• Business Rules allow you to keep those decision making rules in Plain English: When something is true , then do this. That’s it. The rule engine does most of the hard work.
• Integrating Workflow and Rules is easy. Use JBoss Seam (link) or do it by hand (link). And it works on non-JBoss web / app servers such as Websphere, Oracle Application Server, Tomcat and Weblogic.
• Repeat x6 : Use workflow and rules. Use workflow and rules …

In a maybe related development, Tom Baeyens is now using strangely Rules-y like examples over on his workflow blog ….

Just looking for the Drools BRMS - Business Rules Management System Guide? - click here (pdf)

The aim of JBoss Drools (or any other Business Rules Engine) is to get knowledge out of business user’s heads and into a format where it can be copied , edited and peer reviewed , then run 24/7. Ideally, business users should be able to write these rules directly (a) to save time and (b) to reduce errors caused by a 3rd party having to to ‘translate’ these rules into code..

Drools BRMS (Business Rules Management System) is such a tool. Easily deployed into almost any Java Web or App server, it allows users to write and validate business rules that you can then pull into your Enterprise Java Application.

Because it uses the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) , even though it is a web application (i.e. zero install on client machines) it behaves and performs as fast as a desktop one. And unlike some other (Commercial) Rules Engines, it’s free to Download and use (under the Apache licence) from the JBoss site.

And now there is a guide available online. Shortly to be integrated into the existing JBoss Drools documentation a preview of the JBoss Drools BRMS guide (pdf) is now available.

More Information

• JBoss Drools Homepage.
• JBoss BRMS Chapter in the technical documentation
• JBoss Drools Blog

Update: The presentation to the Irish Java Technologies Conference: Life and Death Workflow, using JBoss jBPM is partly based on this training session. (Link to Slides)

We’ve given Enterprise Java Training, Struts 2 Training (the most widely used Java-Web framework), and now it’s the turn of JBoss Rules (Drools) , Workflow (jBPM) and Seam. A lot of the material is coming from the forthcoming Masters Dissertation on Enterprise Web 2.0.

The course (summary below) is a private session. If there’s enough interest I’ll setup a public training session, or cut it back to 1 hour and do it as a ‘free’ intro session. If you can’t wait for that, Mark Proctor’s blog has a lot of useful rules information, and Tim Shadel has the pdf of a presentation that he gave in Phoenix Arizon on his blog.

Knowledge and Process Management

JBoss Rules, jBPM and Seam

Executive Briefing

Description: Success or failure in your business depends on dealing with information faster and better than your competitors. This briefing shows you how the JBoss Business Stack (Rules , jBPM and Seam) can do this and how to apply it to your organisation. Crucially, the briefing shows you when not to use these and details the alternative approaches.

The briefing will give delegates an overview of JBoss Rules within a web / enterprise development environment, how to architect an distribute rules within multi-tier applications and how to link these components with existing sources of information using Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).

Audience: This Briefing is suitable for IT Managers and Directors, IT project managers and technical staff who need an insight into the latest JBoss technologies and business processes, and business managers who need to be aware of the new application models and to give buy-in and commitment to applications developed within it.

Duration: Half-day

Objectives: On completion of this Briefing, delegates will:

• Understand the benefits JBoss technologies offers your business and the key areas where it should be used.
• Know how to successfully use JBoss Rules, jBPM and Seam with new and existing systems and technologies, including the use of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).
• Be able to boost projects using pre-built components and frameworks and be able to choose the right one for their needs.

• Be aware of the main precepts of good application design within the Java component framework, as well as knowing the main Enterprise Java architecture components, terminology and acronyms and their interaction.

• Understand how end-to-end applications are built using the JBoss frameworks (Rules, jBPM, Seam) and appreciate their organisational impact.

Presenter Biography

Paul Browne has 13 years experience delivering IT Projects in the Financial, IT/ Telecoms, Pharmaceutical and Public sectors. An author on JBoss Rules for O’Reilly Books, he has delivered courses for Limerick Institute of Technology, Siemens, Dell, Trigraph and IACT. Holding a Degree in Business from UUC, he is awaiting conferral of an Msc. in Advanced Software Engineering from UCD.

Briefing Content

Introduction and Problem Space

• Delegate introduction
• Trainer introduction
• Course introduction
• The problem we are trying to solve
• Who is JBoss
• 3 Tier Applications
• What is a rule engine
• Alternatives using Java
• Alternatives to Rules
• Alternative Rule Engines
• Section Summary / Intro to next section

Rule Engine overview

• Business Rules (examples)
• Sample Business Uses
• If then statements - can we do better?
• Rete Algorithm
• Forward and Backward Chaining
• Domain Specific Languages (DSL)
• Decision Tables (what the user sees)
• Decision Tables (for the Developer)
• Rule Editors
• JBoss IDE (Red Hat Tools)
• Advanced Rule Language
• System Development Roles
• Section Summary / Intro to next section

Integration and Deployment

• Web environment
• 3 Tier system
• Integration with Spring
• Integration with EJB
• What is workflow
• What is jBPM
• What is Seam
• Seam and JSF
• Seam and jBPM
• Drools.Net
• Section Summary
• Course Summary and Feedback

We’ve given Enterprise Java Training, Struts 2 Training (the most widely used Java-Web framework), and now it’s the turn of JBoss Rules (Drools) , Workflow (jBPM) and Seam. A lot of the material is coming from the forthcoming Masters Dissertation on Enterprise Web 2.0:

The course (summary below) is a private session. If there’s enough interest I’ll setup a public training session, or cut it back to 1 hour and do it as a ‘free’ intro session.

If you can’t wait for that, Mark Proctor’s blog has a lot of useful rules information, and Tim Shadel has the pdf of a presentation that he gave in Phoenix Arizon on his blog.

Knowledge and Process Management

JBoss Rules, jBPM and Seam

Executive Briefing

Description:
Success or failure in your business depends on dealing with information faster and better than your competitors. This briefing shows you how the JBoss Business Stack (Rules , jBPM and Seam) can do this and how to apply it to your organisation. Crucially, the briefing shows you when not to use these and details the alternative approaches.

The briefing will give delegates an overview of JBoss Rules within a web / enterprise development environment, how to architect an distribute rules within multi-tier applications and how to link these components with existing sources of information using Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).

Audience:
This Briefing is suitable for IT Managers and Directors, IT project managers and technical staff who need an insight into the latest JBoss technologies and business processes, and business managers who need to be aware of the new application models and to give buy-in and commitment to applications developed within it.

Duration:
Half-day

Objectives:
On completion of this Briefing, delegates will:

• Understand the benefits JBoss technologies offers your business and the key areas where it should be used.
  





• Know how to successfully use JBoss Rules, jBPM and Seam with new and existing systems and technologies, including the use of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI).
  





• Be able to boost projects using pre-built components and frameworks and be able to choose the right one for their needs.

• Be aware of the main precepts of good application design within the Java component framework, as well as knowing the main Enterprise Java architecture components, terminology and acronyms and their interaction.

• Understand how end-to-end applications are built using the JBoss frameworks (Rules, jBPM, Seam) and appreciate their organisational impact.

Presenter Biography

Paul Browne has 13 years experience delivering IT Projects in the Financial, IT/ Telecoms, Pharmaceutical and Public sectors. An author on JBoss Rules for O’Reilly Books, he has delivered courses for Limerick Institute of Technology, Siemens, Dell, Trigraph and IACT. Holding a Degree in Business from UUC, he is awaiting conferral of an Msc. in Advanced Software Engineering from UCD.

Briefing Content

Introduction and Problem Space

• Delegate introduction

• Trainer introduction

• Course introduction

• The problem we are trying to solve

• Who is JBoss

• 3 Tier Applications

• What is a rule engine

• Alternatives using Java

• Alternatives to Rules

• Alternative Rule Engines

• Section Summary / Intro to next section

Rule Engine overview

• Business Rules (examples)

• Sample Business Uses

• If then statements – can we do better?

• Rete Algorithm

• Forward and Backward Chaining

• Domain Specific Languages (DSL)

• Decision Tables (what the user sees)

• Decision Tables (for the Developer)

• Rule Editors

• JBoss IDE (Red Hat Tools)

• Advanced Rule Language

• System Development Roles

• Section Summary / Intro to next section

Integration and Deployment

• Web environment

• 3 Tier system

• Integration with Spring

• Integration with EJB

• What is workflow

• What is jBPM

• What is Seam

• Seam and JSF

• Seam and jBPM

• Drools.Net

• Section Summary

• Course Summary and Feedback

Apologies to the Dublin Java Meetup. I was due to go tonight (event details). They even agreed to talk about Business Rules and Workflow in Java - a subject dear to my heart. And now I can’t go for family reasons (not as dramatic as it sounds, but enough to cancel).

Sorry Guys.

Yes, it’s incredible , but true. Red Piranha is everything (well , not exactly everything) that I’ve learnt in 7 years of Java consulting, all wrapped up in a nice easy to go bundle. It’s Enterprise software that gets knowledge out of people’s heads and into a PC (no , it’s not as painful as it sounds!).

I hadn’t checked the stats for a while , so I’m astonished to learn that 25,000 people have downloaded a copy from sourceforge. What’s more amazing is that these downloads are for version 1 - a sort of ‘mini Google’. As I write this post the latest (beta) version is being made available to developers. This moves it firmly into the Enterprise Web 2.0 space, adding workflow, rules and rich internet application capabilities (including Ajax and mashups) - more on this blogpost.

By the way , if you’re looking for more information on Enterprise Web 2.0 , you can check out Jerry Bowles blog on this area.

And the results of the Virtual Java Meetup are … here. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

If you couldn’t be bothered reading the entire thing , the results of the Dublin Jury on ‘what technologies should I be learning in the next 12 months’ are:

• Web services are going to be big, but only if they can be simple.
• EJB 3 and Netbeans are both worth taking a look at again, they are now much better than the previous versions that gave them a bad name.
• Middleware (e.g. workflow and Rules Engines) are interesting in a corporate environment, but there is a high barrier to entry.
• Struts , and to a lesser extent JSF , will continue to be dominant Java Web frameworks, despite not being the best technical choice.
• A lot of companies are still using Java 1.4, but may make the leap to Java 6 (Mustang).
• Service Orientated Architecuture (SOA) is a nice idea, but not so many projects have been implemented using it.
• IDE’s (Netbeans / Eclipse / JDeveloper) can deliver a lot of value, but only if backed up by lower level tools (e.g. Ant and Maven).
• More for the next 24 months , keep an eye on Apache Service Mix.

On a recent project , the choice was between Enterprise Java (using frameworks such as DWR and Struts) , or Oracle Forms. The newest latest Java technology , versus a 15 year old technology that Oracle is comitted to phasing out (and moving to ADF / Oracle fusion). No contest , you think , until you hear that the decision was made (and rightly so) to us Oracle Forms.

‘What?!’ I hear you say - how could this happen? The project in question was fairly simple - get information and store it in a database. The problem is , despite being mainstream for the last 6 years, there is no standard, easy ‘drag and drop’ method of doing these applications in Java. C# does it in Visual Studio. Oracle does it with Forms. With Java (and despite having doing 10 or so of these projects), there is still too much plumbing that the developer needs to know.

I’m expecting a deluge of ‘have you tried project X’ on this post. And yes, I expect that an Eclipse based tool will probably fill the gap. But for these simple applications , there is no standard way of doing this (standard being a solution that dominates the market in the way Struts did the Web App framework space, until recently). But we’ve been waiting 6 long years!

All of which brings me to Ruby. Ruby on Rails’ sweet spot is exactly these kind of simple, ajax enabled , no frills ‘get info from web and store it on database’ applications. Enterprise Java’s sweet spot is the heavy lifting workflow , Rules , Calculations, Integration with Legacy and other systems , web services and basically anything to do with Business logic. The two are a perfect complement to each other, which is why the news that JRuby now runs Ruby on Rails is especially interesting.

JRuby is a version of Ruby that runs in the Standard Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It means that (1) You don’t have to install Ruby, which might meet resistance in a corporate environment. It also means (2) that all the methods you have available in Java you have available in Ruby. The O’Reilly Ruby site and this Javaworld Article are good places to start learning more about Ruby and linking it into Java.

No matter what your system does , be it insurance , banking , online travel booking or telecoms, the chances are it does the following things:

• Gets information from users over the web
• Does some business processing on that information
• Saves the information in a database.

At a conservative estimate , about 99% of Enterprise systems would fall into this category.

If so, why do you need an architect , when you can use our ‘one size fits all’ architecture diagram (below)?! Most non-trivial systems, regardless of the language they are written in (be it Java, .Net , or your language of choice) follow the pattern seen in this diagram.

3 Tier Enterprise Diagram

There are 3 Pieces to the Solution:

• Web Browser (for the user / client).
• Web and Application Server - carry out business logic.
• Database Back End - to store data and ensure data integrity.

Within the Application Server (the middle bit above, which as Java Architects is the bit we are interested in), there are a further 3 tiers

• A Presentation tier (or layer), which is mainly about talking to the user (it gets and sends requests to the web browser).
• A Service layer , which is mainly about talking to back end such as databases, legacy systems (such as mainframes) and XML-Web services that we may use.
• A Business layer, the ‘meat’ of the sandwich, where the ‘Value add’ is in terms of business processing and validation.

For each of these layers , your priority in building them are slightly different.

• The Presentation layer is the bit the user sees. You want it to be fast and give a good impression to the client. Underneath, use a standard framework (link: pick your framework here) and then customize the look and feel.
• The Service layer you want to work fast and well (e.g. no data faults), but then then forget about. Unless things go wrong, no user is going to complement you on the quality of database persistence! Use standard libraries for the entire layer.
• Unless your company is a clone or franchise, the business layer in the system is going to be completely different. Aside from the user-interface , concentrate most of your project effort here as this is the core of what system does. We’ve written quite a bit about how to increase the value-add of the business layer (link to O’Reilly Technical Articles)

By the way , we’re only half-joking about the ‘why do you need an architect’ bit. We can be contacted here.

It’s all been very quiet over here , too quiet. And not just because of the hosting issues (the people at Netbunch, you know that I’m talking about you)

It’s been very quiet , because I’ve been very busy. On top of all this , we’re coming to the end of the year for the (part time) Masters at UCD in Dublin, so we’ve also got exams coming up. Thankfully it’s the last year, the downside being I have a dissertation to write.

Being a blogger , I’m not happy putting together a weighty tome that will sit gathering dust on a shelf. Instead , I want something that will solve some business problems , and that I can use as interesting content. So after much thought , the proposed title of my dissertation will be …… cue drum roll ….. ta-da!

Enterprise Web 2.0

Now, if you’ve talked to me , you know I spend a lot of my working day as an Enterprise Java Consultant , working for various banks. The idea is to take some of the Web 2.0 ideas (and you don’t need me to repeat them) and apply them to the sort of problems large companies have. Or , if you want the catchy subtitle , ” it’s all about sucking the knowledge out of people’s brains and putting it onto (ugly) websites”.

So an obvious topic to cover is the use of Ajax , which while big on the web at the moment , is going to be huge once companies realise what it can bring to their internal applications. The rest of the topics cover knowledge management (what is web 2.0 if it’s not about sharing knowledge), but also some tools and techniques that will all Enterprise Java (with all it’s robustness and scalability) compete with the nimbleness and tricks of Ruby.

Business Problem 1: How to present this information to people in a easy to deploy, but powerful way.
Solution: Update to Sun Java article - this one on how to do Web 2.0 / Ajax ‘right’ in Enterprise Java (i.e. not worrying about legacy code)

Business Problem 2: Where you have documentation, but don’t know how to find it.
Solution: Write up of the Red-Piranha Adaptive Search engine that ‘learns’ what the team wants , and finds more of it.

Business Problem 3: Where you have information in Excel sheets, but can’t do much with it.
Solution: Update to previous O’Reilly Articles on JBoss Rules - this one on JBoss’ ability to ‘run’ Excel Spreadsheets.

Business Problem 4: Where you have information that people ‘know’ , but that a machine finds it hard to ‘learn’
Solution: Simple Neural Networks using Joone, applied to a ‘real life’ business problem.

Business Problem 5: Where several people have to work together on a set of information , following a strict set of steps.
Solution: JBoss workflow, with a simple online example

Notes from this Post on the Serverside

 I recently wrote an O’Reilly article on one of the related JBoss projects the Drools / JBoss rules engine.

Just to get the difference between jBPM and Drools / JBoss Rules straight in my head:

- Workflow tends to be ‘wide’ where Rule Engines tend to be  ‘deep’.

- Workflow is wide as the flow is spread over different people / actors and over time.

- Rule Engines are ‘deep’ as they apply simple rules to solve complex problems, but in general the rules are applied ‘all at once’.

Some of the confusion (in my head at least) comes from the fact:

- It is possible to implement workflow using a rules engine, much as it is possible to write your own workflow using Java. Of course , you don’t get the graphical designer that JBpm has.

- Both JBoss Rules (Drools) and JBoss Workflow (jBPM) see to
‘externalize’ part of the solution outside of Java. By stepping outside
of Java to use an XML / Graphical based approach, it makes the solution
easier to configure and understand.

Link to Enterprise Java Workshop, to be led by Dr. Bruce Martin in Dublin on the 6th - 9th March.

Is anybody going? Is it worth $1995 USD for 4 days? (and I’m not going to get sniffy about us using Euro over here ) Who is this course aimed at? In some ways this course is like Corba: very relevant to the very small niche that use these technologies, but the broader line of ‘best practice’ has moved on.

An extract from the Agenda is below. It seem to broadly match what Sun looks for in it’s Enterprise Java Architect Certification. As such it shares the plus and minus of this approach : You get the Orthodox Entreprise Java Approach, or at least the approach being plugged by Sun about 3 years ago.

The trouble with this approach is that the Enterprise Java world has moved on. Hibernate has pushed aside Entity Beans , so much so that Enterprise Java Beans 3.0 is a complete turnaround it it’s direction. Spring has got a lot of traction as an EJB-Lite (and I mean that with the most positive connotations). Enterprise Java Patterns are much better understood (just search the IBM site), if not more widely understood.

Where’s the Ajax and the impact of multiple, small , web requests on application scalability? The JSON (as part of the Web Services)? Does it cover Java Server Faces and the emerging Ajax enabled Java Presentation Frameworks? What about workflow and rule engines and Java Messaging Services (JMS)? How about the tool integration to make your teams life easier when building the designs that you , as an Architect , have come up with? I don’t see Security in there , nor any of the other JSR (Java Specification Requests) that have come out of the broader Java community in the last 3 years.

And that’s before I go on about the only ‘technology alternative’ being offered is .Net - the PHP , Ruby and Oracle guys will have something to say about that! All have strong cases to make on a project by project basis. What about off the shelf products (both open source and commercial) that could , depending on the project, give you most of the functionality you need and you just have to customise the remaining 20%?

Maybe I’m being unfair, and the above is not the aim of the course.

For info, it’s on in the Gresham hotel on Dublin’s O’Connell Street from the 6th to the 9th of March. If you want a good solid foundation in Enterprise Java, and if somebody else is paying for it then it’s probably to be recommended. It might even help you get certified as a ‘Sun Enterprise Java Architect’. But unless you’re in an outstanding group, don’t expect it to be cutting edge.

Are you going - prove me wrong and leave a comment!

Project Module

• Introduction
• The Value Propositions of J2EE and EJB
• J2EE vs..NET
• Requirements of the Auction Application
• Group Discusssion: J2EE or not, EJB or not
• Activity: Identify the Auction Objects
• Vertical Slices
• Activity: Identify Vertical Slice
• Communicating Architectures

Persistence Module

• Pros and cons of JDBC
• Object Relational Mapping
• Java Data Objects (JDO)
• EJB 2.x CMP Model and Relationships
• EJB 3
• Other O-R mapping solutions
• Group Discussion: Persistence Matrix
• Activity: Persistence Strategy for the
  Auction
• Advanced Transaction and Concurrency
  Control topics
• Activity: Identify the Transactions

Scalability Module

• Principles of Scalability and Fault
  Tolerance
• Application Server Clustering solutions
• Activity: Scaling the Auction

Integration Module

• Messaging
• Activity: Messaging in the Auction
• Connectors
• XML, Web Services and SOA
• Activity: Enterprise Application
  Integration
• Activity: B2B Integration

Application Design Module

• Top Ten J2EE Design Patterns
• Activity: Design patterns or not
• Activity: Complete the design
• Group Discussion: Custom Consulting

Workflow is core to most business as it describes the core of what they do. Workflow can be as simple as ‘Search for Flights, Select Flight, Pay, Recieve Email confirmation’, to something much more complex (e.g. a Mortgage application). Many systems already have workflow in them, only they don’t know it. The problem is then that the Business People (who understand the workflow) can’t see how it is implemented in (hidden behind code), while the technical people don’t understand the business process. Workflow (closely related to Rule Engines) aim to solve this problem.

I recently attended an Irish .Net Developers presentation by Aiden O’Connor(long story), about the new Windows Workflow, currently in Beta as part of Microsoft .Net. While workflow in Enterprise Java is nothing new (Serverside Article), the implementation of Workflow in Visual Studio will bring it’s ideas to a wider audience, and force the Java workflow people to ‘raise their game’.

So, why should you be interested in Windows Workflow?

1. Visual Studio has always had ‘Drag and Drop’ building of Systems. Now it will also have ‘Drag and Drop’ flowcharts (it looks a bit like Visio or other drawing tools). When the process hits a stage an Event is triggered and appropriate code called (e.g. similar to a mouse click on a form).
2. It is likely that Business Analysts will use a Visual design tool to draw up the workflow. Programmers will then handle events at each stage in the workflow - a much easier process as they just have to concentrate on a single step, and not worry (so much) about the bigger picture.
3. Long lived workflows and processes can be handled easily. For example, if we have issued the ticket and are waiting for the customer to check in (weeks later), state will be persisted automatically.

It brings the workflow ideas from a niche to a wider audience. Even the Java based frameworks will benefit from this.
1. It is part of the .Net framework - the equivalent in the Java world of it coming free with the JVM. It will run anywhere .Net does, and one workflow can span multiple machines (this was buggy in the beta, but it is a known issue).

Our Technical Knowledge base has just been launched.

We found that over the last 5 years , 80% of the solutions we were building were the same. How many ways are there to take information from the web, apply some business rules or logic to it, and then save it into a database?

Currently the knowledge repository contains information on Enterprise Java , XML , Eclipse, Oracle, Architecture, Project Management as well as a lot of useful links for Dublin, Ireland and Technical specific areas.

The public area to the site can be found here. All information is generic, non-client specific, and can probably already be found on the web, although it is much easier to read it here!

Wired Magazine are running an interesting
article on day traders that are using automated PC applications to carry out
their stock trades.

As a co-incidence, an article I wrote for O’Reilly shows just How to build
an automated Stock and FX trading system.

If you’re looking for a system to make you millions playing the stock and
foreign exchange markets while you sleep, my contact details are above!

Over the last couple of months, been working on a series of Articles for O’Reilly (online) . The articles are on J2EE / Drools (more later) , but it’s been an interesting process - about 4 weeks total effort (if you count it as a day job, in reality it was spread over many evenings and weekends).

The staff at O’Reilly have been very helpful - even if I went about the process backwards (whereas normally you pitch a couple of paragraphs as a summary , then get go-ahead to do the full article). The hardest / most tedious part was formatting the article in simple html , given that it was initally written using Word / OpenOffice.

The Article will be publish on OnJava in the next couple of days , source code for the article can be downloaded here.

The folks at Drools and have been talking about integratng the frameworks ‘for the next release’. They’re not their yet , but there is some sample code available at .

In the meantime , there is a useful article on drools at java.net. (Drools Article Link)