First glimpse of the BPMN2 editor that will be used in Savara

Red Hat recently commissioned the development of a BPMN2 editor from a company called Codehoop. This editor will become the core of the BPMN2 based tooling in Savara - hopefully starting to appear in the near future.

The guys at Codehoop have done a great job! And here is a couple of movies they have put together to help users install the editor and view the OMG BPMN2 examples.

http://vimeo.com/ahtik/installing-bpmn2-editor

http://vimeo.com/ahtik/exploring-bpmn2-omg-samples

Note: the editor is based on Graphiti, which is only at version 0.7.1, and an early version of the Eclipse BPMN2 meta-model, so this is still a work in progress. So expect to find issues with any of the new technologies. However I would encourage you to download the editor and have a play.

The current editor provides the base level capabilities for creating a BPMN2 compliant model and diagram. However as with any new UI, there are areas where usability improvements would be required. This is work that will happen over the coming months, so feel free to express your views on how the use experience can be improved.

At the moment the issue reporting for the editor is through the jBPM project, using the 'Eclipse' component. However we are working towards moving this editor to Eclipse.org .... so watch this space.

Savara goes TAPless

Before anyone gets too excited, let me explain.

Savara 1 recently introduced the concept of the Testable Architecture Project (TAP). This is an XML representation of (as the name suggests) a testable architecture project, defining the different artifacts associated with the stages of the software development lifecycle, and the dependencies between them.

Savara 1 has been primarily focused on the Eclipse environment, and therefore a mechanism was needed to define the artifact dependencies, so that the static validation between various artifacts could be triggered when a change occurred.

However we always had an eye on the future, and that Savara 1 should ideally be working with an SOA repository, and that Savara 2 would be more web centric than Eclipse based. So the problem the TAP was attempting to address was to enable dependencies to be represented when no repository was available.

The problem it introduced was how the dependencies in the TAP would be synchronized with the dependencies that may be defined when those artifacts were also stored in a repository. This was one of the main objections raised to the use of the TAP on the Savara forums, but at the time it was difficult to see how dependency information could be managed without being fully dependent upon the artifacts being stored in the repository - i.e. static validation would only occur when changes were made and committed back to the repository.

However now there may be light at the end of the tunnel. There have been discussions about the creation of a general purpose repository project, with profiles suitable for specific domains (e.g. rules and SOA). There is potential for the Savara project to feed in its requirements, and help contribute to this repository project, to find a solution that would work with and without a repository being available (i.e. online).

Watch this space ........

SAVARA 1.1.0.CR1 Released

We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.1.0.CR1 of SAVARA.

The main new features within this release are service validators for Web Services based on the jbossws-native stack (which includes BPEL processes deployed in RiftSaw), and the first use of the TAP (Testable Architecture Project) file as a means of representing artifacts and their relationships, and being able to validate them.

This new functionality can also be seen in the movies located here.

The detailed release notes can be found at:
https://jira.jboss.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12310870&version=12315104

Testable Architecture in action

A new "movies" page has been added to the Savara project website: http://www.jboss.org/savara/documentation/movies.html

These short movies demonstrate the use of Testable Architecture, at various stages in the software development lifecycle, using the purchasing example that is distributed with Savara.

The version of the software used in the demo is JBoss Tools 3.2.0.Beta1 and Savara 1.1.0.M1 - both versions will be released very shortly.

SAVARA 1.0.0.Final Released

We are pleased to announce that version 1.0.0.Final of SAVARA has been released.

This is the first release of the SAVARA project, which aims to deliver a methodology and tools to support the concept of Testable Architecture. This first release provides the following:

1) An initial version of the Testable Architecture methodology. This can be found on the Savara documentation page. It provides guidance on the type of artifacts that should be defined at each stage of the software development lifecycle, and how these can be used in a testable manner. The Getting Started Guide provides an illustration of how this methodology can be applied in the context of the distributed samples.

2) Design-time tool capabilities include:

a) Integration with pi4soa WS-CDL choreography and scenario design tools, with simulation support for testing scenarios against a choreography

b) BPMN (version 1) export from a Choreography (currently just used for documentation purposes)

c) HTML documentation generation from a Choreography

d) WSDL generation from a Choreography

e) WS-BPEL generation from a Choreography (created as a JBoss Tools compatible BPEL project for deployment in RiftSaw)

3) Runtime capabilities include:

a) JBossESB service validation against a Choreography



The release can be found on the download page as a binary distribution, containing documentation, samples and the runtime service validation components, and an Eclipse update site for the design-time tools. Pre-requisites and installation instructions can be found in the Getting Started Guide.

CSC support for Savara Open Source Project

CSC are pleased to support SAVARA methodology and are keen to investigate the usage of testable architectures/ modelling and simulation in addition to their industry standard and approved methods for solution development. CSC looks forward to benefiting from the deliverables / outcomes delivered by the SAVARA project.

SAVARA 1.0.0.CR2 Released

We are pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.0.CR2 of SAVARA.

This release is primarily a bug fix release, with a number of issues being resolved with the BPEL and WSDL generation.

The detailed release notes can be found at:
https://jira.jboss.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12310870&version=12314160