struts-workflow (Re: OT: Struts JSR?)

[Joe Germuska <Jo...@Germuska.com>]

>1:There is no overlap as there does not seem to be any development 
>going on about WorkFlow area in struts.

I think you are correct; people seem to be gravitating to struts-workflow.

>2:While brousing through struts-dev archive, I came aross many 
>threads where the topic of a workflow like concept was discussed.But 
>nobody seems to have taken this up any further,apart from a mail 
>where in craig has mentioned that he would like to implement a 
>workflow engine where the scriptign languages may be used to define 
>the workflow.he has also mentioned using jelly for the same.
>
>But for me, the struts-workflow is more like a wizard 
>implementation,not a real workflow processing engine.SO I am still 
>not clear where jelly like packages may help.But may be I am just 
>being naive.

I think it's true that in a wizard scenario, scripting is less likely 
to be needed.  Insofar as one would want to use scripting, I'd 
probably advocate for a BSF implementation rather than Jelly, so that 
people can script in any language they want.  (Well, actually, I 
don't think there's a Jelly BSF engine, but I don't think that many 
people want to script in Jelly either.)

>3:The mention of the commons chainning for integrating expernal 
>packages like workflow so that the processing can be intercepted at 
>perticular points and customised.This soundds very interesting 
>concept and very suitable for the workflow requirement.I have not 
>invested much time into this perticular aspect but plan to do so.And 
>I also have a feeling that the future direction for the workflow 
>extension shuld be to move towards the usage of the commons 
>chainning package.

I haven't come up to speed on struts-workflow, although I've been 
wanting to for a while.  I remember that Matthias was one of the 
people who really wanted to see a composable request processing 
chain, since right now Struts-Workflow has to extend 
RequestProcessor.  It seems likely that the fit will be pretty 
natural.

>So this leaves me where I started.Very unclear about the direction 
>the struts is going to take in this regard.And very unclear about 
>how to plan the next major enhancement for the extension.

I'm not sure which of the above you'd like to resolve to make more 
planning.  I think (1) is a non-issue; (2) should be deferred until 
someone has a use-case for it, and (3) -- well, we're going to work 
on moving the commons-chain based request processor into the Struts 
core shortly after we deal with migrating Struts to a TLP.  But it 
works enough right now that you could probably begin exploring using 
it for Struts-Workflow.  I'm interested in both chain and workflow, 
so you might be able to con me into helping out a little bit 8^)

Joe

-- 
Joe Germuska            
Joe@Germuska.com  
http://blog.germuska.com    
       "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them 
the usual way.  This happens to us all the time with computers, and 
nobody thinks of complaining."
             -- Jef Raskin

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