I’m currently working on a project which integrates Spring Webflow and jBPM. As a newbie, I’ve learned about the availability of review copy’s of the book: Business Process Management with JBoss jBPM, written by Matt Cumberlidge and published by PACKT Publishing. So in practice I’ve got a free book in exchange for this review.
The book is intended as an good introduction into the BPM world, primarily for Business Analysts. For developers it promises a useful introduction to the key concepts with directions for implementing BPM the right way.
Things I didn’t like:
Let’s start with the easy part, trashing parts of the book. My first thought I had when I received the book, is that it’s rather small. With only a good 200 pages, stuffed with screenshots and code examples, the book is practically read in a day. And that is with every exercise made. Of course, you could also argue this is positive, but this brings me to my second issue: the book is not thoroughly enough for developers. I like to code and I need coding guidelines to do that. This book does not provide that.
Things I liked:
It’s a good thing that there are a lot more things I liked about the book. Firstly, the book actually delivers what it says: providing a good introduction into the jBPM world. Instead of being a reference book, it’s a hands-on book for Business Analysts. It’s short, to the point and very easy to read cover to cover.
The code examples just work! This seems normal, but it ain’t. I’ve read my share of books where the examples always needed a little magic to work. There is one catch: the examples work for jBPM Designer 3.2 (suite). They do not work with 3.2.2. I don’t know why or how, but the 3.2.2 version actually has LESS features then the older version. Took me a while to find it. (Actually, this is a negative…).
There is always a trade-off: provide a decent small examples, or deliver a large complete example. This book chose the latter, which would be way to large if they didn’t provide the example in real code, for each chapter. So you can start the next chapter with only the code you would have written in the previous one. Very well done! Makes it all the more fun to actually follow the examples throughout the book.
It handles stuff that’s pure BPM, and not only jBPM. It talks about kick-off meetings, project sponsors and SME‘s. This helps deliver a good broad image of BPM.
Conclusion
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about jBPM. It’s actually a fantastic book, if you know what it will deliver. Hands one experience from a business analysts view, nothing more, nothing less! For a developer like myself, it doesn’t provide the answers to actually create a full-wedged application with it, but it’ll help paving the way.
Andries
Hi!
I’ve rear your post. It’s very interesting. I’m going to read this book to introduce myself in the jBPM’s world. I’m new in this world, I’m going to do my final proyect using workflows, well using jBPM (because I think that it’s one of the best open source workflow engine). I know that jBPM follows the standard that propose WfMC.I would like what packages of jBPM’s API implements the interfaces that WfMC propose.Finally I asociated the following packages with the interfaces:
Interface1 –> org.jbpm.model.definition (contains the interface for definition of processes)
Interface2 –> org.jbpm.model.execution (contains the interface for execution of processes)
Interface3 –> org.jbpm.delegation.ActionHandler (is the delegation-interface for the execution of process-initiated actions.)
Interface4 –> org.jbpm.identity (is a domain model for organisational information like users, groups and permissions)
Interface5 –> org.jbpm.LogService (contains is the interface for retrieving audit logger information about process executions)
Do you know if this asociation is correct? Thank you very much for your attention.
Regards.
I have no idea.
To be honest, I never head of WfMC. Thanks for info, looking into it now
Since your copy of this book found it’s way to my desk, I also will give my opinion about it here.
In general, I agree with your statements.
It’s easy to read, gives nice general info about BPM, but it is definitely lacking in ‘real’ code examples. By ‘real’ I mean integration in applications, application servers and that stuff. But in the end, the subtitle ‘A practical guide for business analyst’ gives away the real purpose of this book.
For me, it was a nice intro to learn the JBPM concepts, but nothing more. I wouldn’t call it a fantastic book, but maybe that’s because I’m a developer and no business analyst.
By the way, If you are interested in the WfMC, you might want to check out http://www.workflowpatterns.com, which gives a more academic view on business process modeling.
Somehow the URL was screwed in my comment, so once again here it is: http://www.workflowpatterns.com
Hi!!
I’ve flick through the book! It’s nice but I agrre with Joram Barrez. There isn’t real code examples. Somebody know where I get documentation with code examples? In the JBoss jBPM site don’t find documents with this characteristics.
Ah!!! Relatively with jBPM and WfMC … I finally put the following correspondence:
Inteface 1–>org.jbpm.graph.def.ProcessDefinition
Inteface 2–>org.jbpm.graph.exe.ProcessInstance
Inteface 3–>org.jbpm.graph.def.ActionHandler
Inteface 4–>org.jbpm.identity
Inteface 5–>org.jbpm.logging.log