Pros and Cons of using OBPM

Pros

• visualized in IDE, easy to understand the whole workflow picture
• function embedded or generated automatically by drag and drop
• UI generated, although not beautiful

 

Cons

• Performance
• Scalability
• How to work with version control?
• How to work with continues build?
• transaction control
• i18n problem – In my project, it needs both English and French, but French does not work perfectly.
• not open source and very limited document can be found on internet
• Obvious bugs – in both studio and web admin console, I used to deployed one application and never can un-deploy it. I tried everything, the engine was restarted, the weblgoic server was restarted, it just cannot be un-deployed.
• learning curve – because of lacking document, the learning curve is definitely long

 

Another question here is “When do we need a workflow engine?”

My answer may not be correct. I think if your work need different roles to contribute, for example, normal employee, account, HR, manager… and a lot of other roles and the flow may have a lot of different routes base on users different contribution, workflow engine may brings some benefit. 

I reviewed our project. Hmm…. it only has two roles… moreover 90% activities are on one role. Hmm… .do we really need workflow engine??? It does have many activities but can we use Camel + JMS Queue or rule engine to implement it?