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

[sh...@ubs.com]

Hello Ted,

I am working with the struts workflow for sometime now and have taken up the responsibility of porting it to sourceforge as the lead commiter(Matthias bauer)has moved on to some other area of development.

So this makes me perticularly interested in this topic.

Like you said,"The thing about open source is this: You don't have to wish -- *you* can make it so. "

That is one of major reasons why I took up this responsibility.The Workflow extension does a very good job of filling in the void in struts in this perticular area.But also we found out that it did not satisfy some requirements,sepecially the APIs leave much desired in terms of extendibility.

The issue that has been bogging me down for sometime now is what should be the future course of action if the extension has to continue to evolve, just like struts.The first task that I have planned is to keep the current framework the same but just provide more extension points in the API.

But that is very short term view.The next task can easily be to add some of the missing features.

But before going ahead in this direction,I also want to be sure that any direction I take is in line with struts APIs and also there is no overlap.And I have come to following conclusions.

1:There is no overlap as there does not seem to be any development going on about WorkFlow area in struts.The only reference I could find was to 

workflow-mapping.xml in sandbox area.

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.

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.

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.

Any clues will be highly appreciated.

Regards,

Shirish.

 

 

 

 

????????????????

So apart from making current Workflow Extension available on Sourceforge and do any bugfixes, 

????????????????

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----

From: Ted Husted [mailto:husted@apache.org]

Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2004 2:06 PM

To: Struts Developers List

Subject: Re: OT: Struts JSR?

 

I think all of these things are already on the Struts Jericho list. The exception being workflow integration. The Struts Workflow is OK, but I personally don't like to use multiple action paths for workflows. Of course, the really cool thing about the Struts Chain is that it makes it very easy to "integrate" packages like this into Struts. Struts becomes less of a framework and more a framework for writing frameworks. 

The other minor exception would be "Chained actions" . I doubt that any of us will ever recommend forwarding from one action to another to form a chain of responsibility. But, again, that's something that the Commons Chain can do much better than conventional Struts Actions ever could.

Here's my question to you: If you were a member of a development team, and someone handed you a list like this, what would you do first?

And, having answered the question, go ahead and do it, and post it here.

The thing about open source is this: You don't have to wish -- *you* can make it so. 

-Ted.

On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 00:22:25 -0800, Nadeem Bitar wrote:

>>

>> Such as? What kinds of innovations are you looking for, and

>> specifically what kinds of things are you seeing other frameworks

>> use that Struts could benefit from?

>>

>

> I posted this before but here is my struts 2.0 wish list again:

>

>

> * Leverage JSF and JSTL remove struts tags that have similar

> functionality. * Support for IoC. * Cleaner interfaces. * Workflow

> integration. * Chained actions * Support for portlet(JSR-168)

>

>

> nadeem bitar

>

>

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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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