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Does Drools/JBPM5 support data flow?

Does Drools/JBPM5 support data flow?

Or is it only control flow?

Solution

  • It is using BPMN2 for modeling business processes. BPMN2 does not really visually model data flow. Rather, if data is to be passed from one node to another, it uses data elements like for example a process variable to store the information. So the first node stores a value in a data element and the other node can retrieve its value later.

    Note that BPMN2 also allows you to model (some of) this visually, using data connections between nodes and the input / output data.

    jBPM5 does not require you to also visually model the data flow (actually, by default it does not do this as it complicates the process diagram, but it uses data input and output associations that are not visible in the diagram). But you should be able to just model and execute a BPMN2 process that also graphically models the data flow.

    Kris