(1460) Bringing BPM and RIA together: Process-based ULC application development

Software Demo

Tuesday, 2007-06-26, 10:00 - 10:50, Arena 1

Thursday, 2007-06-28, 13:00 - 13:50, Arena 1

Kaspar von Gunten - ivyTeam-SorecoGroup (speaker)
Reto Weiss - ivyTeam-SorecoGroup (co-speaker)

Topics

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Abstract

This software demo illustrates the concepts of the technical session 740: "Process-based Application Development: A flexible and End-user centered way of creating Software" and introduces the Xpert.ivy 4.0 software. 1. Xpert.ivy 4.0 With the Eclipse-based "Xpert.ivy" Business Process Modeling IDE, users can graphically design process-based applications with workflow. The created process models can be run and simulated as a local web application at any point of time, especially while still under development. Completed applications are uploaded to a server, where they can be accessed as public rich web applications. The version 4.0 of Xpert.ivy (which is still under development) takes advantage of the Canoo ULC framework to provide a rich web interface for users of the processes and workflows. At any point where the process requires user interaction, a previously designed ULC panel is presented to the user. Such panels can have any level of complexity and richness; depending on the kind of data presented and functionality required for manipulation. Xpert.ivy 4.0 does not only contain a graphical process designer. It also contains a visual designer for the development of the mentioned UI panels (so called "Rich Dialogs"). However, while the regular way of implementing UI logic involves writing code, Xpert.ivy supports implementing the UI-logic by means of (graphical) processes. Each action or event that is generated by the UI triggers an implementation process, which may subsequently modify data and/or alter the information shown on the UI. The overall intention is to shield the user from code completely, or at least as much as possible. The presented way of development is essentially what we describe as "process-based application development" in the beforementioned technical presentation. Applications that are designed in such a way allow for very flexible customization of their behaviour. 2. Demo key points We intend to - show how to develop ULC panels with a flexible process-based implementation using a visual editor for Java for the UI and our own graphical process editor for the implementation - show how we use ULC as a means for interaction with a running business process in a workflow - show how to customize and modify behaviour of an existing application by simply altering its graphical process model in specific points - show how to integrate existing (web-) services in a flexible way using a process layer and thus effectively transforming them into a new web application. The last point can somehow be compared to a Web2.0 mash-up using ULC as front-end. However, our approach includes, but is not limited to the integration of web services. With a freely programmable process element we can include any application service that can be accessed through a Java API. We are currently building desktop software this way.