XFlow 介绍
XFlow is a pure J2EE platform for building, executing and managing business
processes and workflows. It is a basis for building collaborative applications
as well as integrating processes across an enterprise. XFlow has a small
footprint but is extremely powerful. It is designed to be easy to use from the
development, deployment and management standpoints.
XFlow runs within an EJB and servlet container. JBoss 4.0 (with bundled
Tomcat) is the container used in this implementation. The architecture
supports distributed and parallel processes within an organization’s firewall
as well as across organizational boundaries.
XFlow is designed for scalability, extensibility and ease of integration with
security models and legacy processes. XFlow’s service-oriented architecture
supports both a simple Java API as well as a web-service (SOAP/HTTP)
interface.
The following diagram shows a conceptual view of XFlow:
Any application or component may be a participant process in XFlow. A
participant process is associated with a specific node in a workflow graph. A
process receives work items from the XFlow server in its inbox, performs work
on the item and returns the item back to the server for routing to other
participant processes. Processes communicate with the XFlow server via a
client API or via web-services. Examples of participant processes can be any
one of the following:
- A Java application
- A servlet
- An EJB
- A JSP
- A non-Java application (e.g. .NET application using XFlow webservices)