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Open source BPEL engines review: OW2 Orchestra

General

Name

Orchestra

Vendor

OW2 - Object Web

Homepage

http://orchestra.objectweb.org/

License

LGPL License

Current version

4

Standards

The product implements BPEL standard. Documentation for RC1, stands that current limitations are:

• No fault management
• forEach in parallel mode
• Some restrictions in assign statement: no extensionAssignOperation, to partnerlink not supported, validate not supported
• Some restrictions in scope statement: isolated not supported, exitOnStandardFault not supported
• partnerlink : dynamic update of endpoints handlers not supported
• The following BPEL 2.0 statements are not supported: throw / rethrow, exit, compensate, compensateScope, validate, extensionActivity, import, extensions

Platform

Orchestra runs in a servlet container or a J2EE container (JOnAS is recommended), and not standalone.

Architecture

Orchestra is part of project Nova, where the Process Virtual Machine (PVM) is the common engine, shared with project Bonita that uses XPDL standard. This engine is also shared with jBPM project.

The persistence of long running process uses a RDBMS, and supports PostgreSQL 8.2 and HSQL.

Image source: http://download.forge.objectweb.org/orchestra/Nova_Orchestra.png

Advanced features

ESB integration

It provides native integration with PEtALS.

Process versioning

I didn't find it.

Transactions

I didn't find it.

Human Tasks

Orchestra handles Human Tasks through the TaskContainer, that is embedded in the PVM core itself, thus perfectly integrated.

Security

I didn't find it.

Clustering

I didn't find it.

Events

I didn't find it.

Management

It has an API to handle deployed process and running instances, that is based on JMX.

Also includes a new Web 2.0 administration console.

Development tools

The project doesn't include this tools. You can use tools available from other projects, like Eclipse.

Project

Documentation

The documentation is short, and a little bit behind the latest release.

Forums

It has a users mailing list, with little traffic (about 10 messages/month), and a development one, with about 30 messages/month.

There are also two forums, but there's no activity yet.

Support

Through lists and forums.

Subscription

You can get payed support from Bull.

Project health

Roadmap

The roadmap is pretty clear, and so for the end of the year we're expecting release 4.1, that includes:

• Advanced enterprise asynchronous based services: JEE JMS integration, JEE timers
• Java based process definition and execution API
• First version of the new Process Editor based on Eclipse technologies and supporting the BPMN standard (with BPEL 2.0 generation)
• Include BI and BAM graphical capabilities directly integrated in the Process Console.

Release plan

We're still waiting for 4.0 final, and then 4.1 for december.

Release history

• v3 Dec 22, 2006
• v4 M1 Oct 26, 2007
• v4 M2 Dec 11, 2007
• v4 M3 Mar 25, 2008
• v4 M4 Apr 17, 2008
• v4 RC1 May 5, 2008
• v4 RC2 Jun 5, 2008