Thursday, June 23, 2011

jBPM 5.1.0 released!

We're proud to announce the release of jBPM 5.1.0.
jBPM is a flexible open-source Business Process Management (BPM) Suite. The core of jBPM is a light-weight, extensible workflow engine written in pure Java that allows you to execute business processes using the latest BPMN 2.0 specification. It can run in any Java environment, embedded in your application or as a service. On top of that, it supports a lot of tooling to support the business process through its entire life cycle, both for developers and business users. This includes an Eclipse plugin, web-based Designer, repository, management console, etc.
You can download everything here.

jBPM 5.1 includes a lot of small bug fixes and feature enhancements based on the feedback we received from the community (for jBPM 5.0). Most important improvements include:
  • The web-based Designer has been extended significantly to support all BPMN 2.0 constructs and to allow full round-tripping between the Eclipse-based and the web-based editor. It also supports domain-specific nodes now, can be embedded, etc.

  • A new jbpm-examples module contains a large number of example processes to show features like human tasks (including data passing and task forms), looping, multiple instances, rule-based integration, etc. I will describe some of these examples in more detail in some additional blog entries in the next few days.

  • Improved testing and debugging capabilities so you can easily JUnit-test your processes.

  • The documentation has been refactored, updated and extended. There's a new Overview and Getting Started chapter, and much more. And we'll continue this work in the next few weeks as well, so you can expect more details soon.

  • The new BPMN 2.0 Eclipse plugin has made significant steps forward as well. The goal of this new editor is to support the full BPMN 2.0 specification . It's still work in progress but it can already be used to create executable BPMN2 processes and execute them on jBPM5. We'll be working hard to improve the usability in the next few months.

  • Smaller feature enhancements, like
    • Automatic synchronization of processes in the jbpm-console when new proceses are deployed on the Guvnor repository
    • Simplified data passing to and from human tasks (and forms)
    • Extended BPMN2 engine with support for repeating timers
    • Support for multi-threading
A full overview of everything that was included can be found in the jBPM JIRA.



jBPM 5.1.0 is synchronized with Drools 5.2.0, which also has just been released. If you want to know more, take a look here.

I'd like to thank everyone that contributed to this release! This includes not just the core developers obviously, but everyone in the community that contributed in one way or another, from testing, improving documentation, creating examples, bug reporting to submitting patches and feature contributions!