Workflow Support Proposal

["Craig R. McClanahan" <cr...@apache.org>]

Well, it took longer than I wanted, but I've gotten my "airplane
time" notes on what workflow support could look like in Struts into shape
enough to share them for comment from the interested community.  The basic
motivations here were:

* Allow the composition of web applications out of existing
  business logic components, reducing the need for Java developers
  (to write Actions).

* Leverage the current technology directions of XML to provide a
  natural means for extensibility of the basic workflow engine's
  capabilities.

* Split the implementation into generic workflow support (useful for
  many environments outside of Struts) and a Struts-specific overlay.

This is a pretty blue-sky approach to the workflow concepts, compared to
some of the discussions that have gone on before -- but it has
*definitely* benefitted from those conversations!

The online version of the proposal is at:

  http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/proposal-workflow.html

Craig

Re: Workflow Support Proposal

[Oleg V Alexeev <oa...@apache.org>]

Hello Craig,

Saturday, August 11, 2001, 8:03:47 AM, you wrote:

CRM> Well, it took longer than I wanted, but I've gotten my "airplane
CRM> time" notes on what workflow support could look like in Struts into shape
CRM> enough to share them for comment from the interested community.  The basic
CRM> motivations here were:

CRM> * Allow the composition of web applications out of existing
CRM>   business logic components, reducing the need for Java developers
CRM>   (to write Actions).

CRM> * Leverage the current technology directions of XML to provide a
CRM>   natural means for extensibility of the basic workflow engine's
CRM>   capabilities.

CRM> * Split the implementation into generic workflow support (useful for
CRM>   many environments outside of Struts) and a Struts-specific overlay.

CRM> This is a pretty blue-sky approach to the workflow concepts, compared to
CRM> some of the discussions that have gone on before -- but it has
CRM> *definitely* benefitted from those conversations!

CRM> The online version of the proposal is at:

CRM>   http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/proposal-workflow.html

Very interesting for me. Last month I try to develop Command/Processor
service for Servicemanager. Architecture of this service is mainly
ready to implement in code, but config semantic for the service is
very poor. I review Craig's article at jakarta and found it's config
samples very useful and clear.

Amd more... ServiceManager is not struts related only module - it can
be used as independent framework. May be ServiceManager's place is in
jakarta-commons? And little extended version of ServiceManager for
struts framework can be placed directly to the struts project.

-- 
Best regards,
 Oleg                            mailto:oalexeev@apache.org