Rapid development of rich browser process management system by combining Dorado and sunflow

From: http://www.bstek.com/list.asp? Id = 1001

In the face of complex internal transaction management, reifeng needs an internal transaction management system. The system should be characterized by a wide range of services, a large number of users, complicated processes, and complicated interfaces. How should such a system be developed?
The Internal Affairs Management of Mianyang reifeng involves sending and receiving documents, daily affairs management, central resource management, personal office operations, information sharing and transmission, etc, the use of software covers the network center, Software Development Department, and other technical departments and administrative departments of the computing center Research Institute.

Integrate traditional development models

As we all know, the traditional system development model of "foreground function page (JSP page) + background business processing logic" is increasingly unable to meet the needs of enterprise development. This mode has the following drawbacks: demand change risks, code modification risks, and low development efficiency.

After investigation and analysis of the traditional system development process, the development of the B/S system can be summarized into four categories: data persistence development, business process development, page logic development, and page display development.

Workflow software can be used for business process logic development for process design and operation management. The development of the page presentation layer can speed up the development efficiency of the page by using professional presentation layer development components. Page logic development can be completed through mature web development frameworks (such as struts. The development of the data persistence layer can be completed through mature persistence layer frameworks such as hibernate. For the rest, developers only need to develop data persistence and page logic for specific business needs.

Obviously, if mature workflow products and quick display layer middleware are used in the system development process, coupled with the popular web development framework and data persistence technology, the development workload can be greatly reduced, it can effectively avoid project risks and shorten the project cycle. It can also free developers from heavy development work, so that they can focus more on grasping requirements and system analysis and design, improve the quality of the output system.

After investigation and testing by multiple parties, Mianyang reifeng finally adopted the sunflow workflow product and the Dorado rich browser to display the Integrated Development Mode of middleware, which took only a few weeks, A management system meeting internal management needs is developed. In the past, the development of similar management systems took several months, and the subsequent Business Process flexibility could not be adjusted. This development mode doubles the development efficiency and reduces the maintenance workload in the later stage. This practice is summarized and extracted, which has a certain reference value for solving such problems.

Jointly provide efficient solutions

Sunflow is an excellent domestic workflow product developed by Hangzhou ciyada System Engineering Co., Ltd. Based on the open J2EE platform, it adopts WfMC as the standard distributed workflow management system, it provides a powerful process presentation capability and a convenient secondary development framework.

Dorado is a rich Browser display middleware of redo Information Technology Co., Ltd. It uses rich browsers to improve the information carrying capacity, expressiveness and operability of Web user interfaces, the browser implements the interface style and operation habits similar to the C/S application, and forms a data module-view model-controller MVC Architecture in the presentation layer through the presentation middleware mechanism, the unified platform provides 12 categories of display layer components that contain standardized event frameworks and attributes, so that the front-end part of B/S application development is promoted from manual jobs to semi-automated jobs.

To make it easier for developers to use it, Hangzhou sinyada System Engineering Co., Ltd. and Shanghai redo Information Technology Co., Ltd. jointly invested in the in-depth integration of sunflow and Dorado products. The integrated product further improves the efficiency of developing business systems using sunflow and Dorado products. This solution has many features.

1. Business data and process data are stored independently. The business data is stored in the business database, and the process instance data is stored in the workflow database for classified management of business metadata. These two types of data are independent of each other and provide data sources for business systems.

2. provides a complete set of auxiliary development tools from the design period to the runtime period. During the design period, developers can use process design tools to model business processes, and use process publishing to publish the designed processes to the specified workflow engine. Form Design and page development can be completed using Dorado studio; during runtime, developers can use the workflow engine to manage the process logic, and the Dorado engine to manage the middleware.

3. Provides the integrated component sunflowviewmodule. Extended the view layer of Dorado, and encapsulated most of the calling processes of the workflow engine in the application into this component in advance. Generally, developers do not need to directly call the workflow interface and directly reference and configure the component, reducing the difficulty of application development and improving development efficiency.

4. the integrated product also provides a unified client display instance and development case to show the main features and Use Cases of the Integrated Product in process management and web development, this includes the best web development practices for integrated products under different Web frameworks, such as struts, webwork, and JSF.

Implementation Project as required

Meetings are usually held in the Company's departments. When you apply for a department meeting, you must submit the name, venue, secret level, and other content of the meeting, then, the approval department of the Conference venue determines whether the application meets the requirements based on the secret level of the Meeting and the location of the meeting. If the application meets the requirements, preventive measures are formulated and submitted to the next department for approval, otherwise, no approval is returned. The application for this meeting is approved by each approval department. If the meeting confidentiality level reaches the specified level, the highest level of approval department is required. If the application is approved, the meeting can be confirmed; otherwise, no approval will be returned.

Based on the requirement analysis, the data structure of the "meeting Application Form" is put forward by sinyada and stored in the business data persistence layer. The meetingrequest table is used to record the relevant data required for the meeting application, and the approvehistory table is used to record the historical log information of various operations in the process. The data plays a key supporting role for the entire process.

In addition, considering that the document has a transfer requirement and is independent from the process data according to the principle of business metadata, the document is designed to store sensitive routing data in the process data persistence layer. The requestid user establishes the association between workflow-related data and business metadata. The sign user marks the approval opinions of different approvers, And the securitylevel is used by the engine to determine the process direction based on the secret level.

Based on the theoretical extraction of the approval process of the meeting process application process, ciyada uses the sunflow process designer to design a process definition template that meets the business needs. This process includes multiple steps, such as application submission, venue approval, approval by competent authorities at all levels, and top secret judgment.

In the process of page logic development, Xinyi took full advantage of the flexible Expansion Mechanism in Dorado, and developed a set of business logic suites specifically used for interaction with sunflow-sunflowviewmodule, it provides configurable methods for various attributes to quickly meet general business needs. For complex business implementations, this suite also provides developers with interfaces to expand existing functions, allowing developers to customize more complex and powerful logic implementations.

In terms of page display, the traditional method of writing and marking code makes full use of the rich browser to display the display mode of the embedded and configurable web page components of the middleware Dorado, bind different display components to dataset of different data objects, including binding with sunflowviewmodule to complete the elegant and complete reproduction of data in various business processes, the Ajax technology provided by Dorado is used to implement the data update mechanism that does not refresh the page, so that users can enjoy a great experience when performing page operations.

Achieve agile development

With the sunflow product, the team responsible for business process development can extract the process model as needed and develop and test the model in the workflow system, you don't have to wait for the business interface to be developed before testing the process. With the Dorado rich browser, the page development team can quickly build a business interface prototype and quickly perform requirement verification. With sunflow and Dorado for business development, you can quickly build a business prototype in the demand research phase, which is conducive to project members to grasp the needs and evaluate the project cycle reasonably, you can perform integration tests early to detect problems and avoid project risks. Similarly, in the post-project maintenance phase, the business process logic management is relatively independent, reducing the risk of code modification due to system requirements changes.

Because sunflow and Dorado integrated products are used in the Mianyang reifeng project, the project development content is clearer, the Organization Division is clearer, the project development process is more agile and efficient, and the project plan is accurate and reasonable, project risks are effectively avoided. We can say that we have found a low-risk, low-cost, and efficient general development solution for quickly building business systems.

For system developers, the use of a workflow engine with rigorous logic can make the system more advantageous in process processing and make the system "confident" in the face of process changes ". Similarly, the use of an elegant and quick interface display development tool can make the system more advantageous in page display, so that the system is "full-faced" in the face of users' complex interaction needs ". To do things well, you must first sharpen the tool. All business applications that need to face the pressure of re-engineering business processes and complex page interaction presentation are suitable for using this sunflow & Dorado integrated development model.

With the development of IT technology and the increasingly refined and professional division of labor in society, it is impossible for any project to meet the ever-changing needs of customers by growing one company, the emergence of specialized middleware products that can solve problems in specific fields is very necessary. In line with the purpose of doing what we are best at, we make full use of all kinds of advantageous resources to integrate different resources, so as to gain more powerful resource advantages and become the fundamental way for the development and cooperation of various industries.