Eclipse JWT 1.6.0 Release Review

Type
Release
State
Successful
End Date of the Review Period

Reviews run for a minimum of one week. The outcome of the review is decided on this date. This is the last day to make comments or ask questions about this review.

Project
Release

1.6.0

Description

The 1.6.0 release brings support of Eclipse 4.6 (Neon).

Architectural Issues

(no change since previous release) Several extension points available that are already used by plugins in order to extend the JWT Workflow Editor. See details in wiki.

Non-Code Aspects

User & developer documentation is up to date and constantly improved on the wiki, mailing lists and bugzilla are constantly used, news are written on the website.



Until this date, two articles about JWT have been published in the german "Eclipse Magazin".



Several presentations about or involving JWT have been given at Eclipse Summit Europe 07, EclipseCon08, Open World Forum 2008, EclipseCon09, Solutions Linux 2009, Eclipse Forum Europe 2009, Eclipse Europe Summit 2009 and EclipseCon10, Eclipse Demo Camp Grenoble 2011, and more recently :

  • Eclipse Con US 2013 - SOA Symposium by Marc Gille (Sungard, Stardust BPM), Adrian Mos (Xerox, Mangrove) and Bob Brodt (Red Hat, BPMN2 modeler), with a few slides (35-37) about JWT integration with the EasySOA Registry service-oriented governance solution
  • Eclipse Con Europe 2012 - "Models as Operational Documentation & SOA Use Case" by Marc Dutoo in SOA Symposium, showcasing JWT ECM Sync (EMF2CMIS transformation)
  • Eclipse DemoCamp Juno 2012 in Grenoble, 2012 June 13 - "From Eclipse to Document management : a case study for JWT & EasySOA" by Marc Dutoo, see http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_Juno_2012/Grenoble

Maturity

JWT is a mature project in the Eclipse SOA top-level project, and has been a part of the yearly release train since Galileo.

The build process is automatized for continuous integration. It is based on Maven and Tycho.

Well-documented in Wiki, about:

  • the usage of JWT (Workflow Editor, Transformations, ...)
  • as well as developer documentation. All extension possibilities by external plugins are documented there, and have examples that are available at least in the SVN.

Ongoing development and active mailing list.

Several example plugins are available that demonstrate the usage and extensibility.

JWT is used in development and production:

  • It has been integrated in several third-party solutions like e.g. AgilPro or OW2 Scarbo. OW2 Scarbo 1.2 has been released in November 2011 was then used in production by ANCV in Paris, France.
  • Mailing list exchanges show new products being built on JWT, by companies like Mastek LTD, India and research work being done by labs like the German University in Cairo, Egypt.
Usability Details

JWT enables a user to model his/her processes and workflows and use these models not only for documentation, but also for execution.

The model can be used to generate code in different languages (such as XPDL)‏.

The model can be transformed to other models (e.g. SOA BPMN & Mangrove).

The model can be displayed using different graphical representations a.k.a. "views" (e.g. BPMN, UML-AD, EPC).

It provides a lot of extension points where others can build on it and extend several parts of the editor, see http://wiki.eclipse.org/JWT_Extensions .

If necessary, the meta-model can be adapted to the needs of each user through Aspect Oriented Modeling.

Standards

The relationship to existing standards has been achieved by the following:

  • Addition of a UML Activity diagram view
  • Addition of a EPC model view
  • Transformation to the Eclipse STP BPMN modeler
  • Codegeneration of XPDL possible
  • Addition of a BPMN Activity diagram view
  • Transformation of EMF to Document Management-domain standard CMIS is in the work.

Existing transformation to the SOA Mangrove model (formerly STP IM), which aims to bridge different standard oriented tools within the STP project, like BPMN and SCA editors or BPEL.

Communities

Bugzilla usage by the committers and others (extenders).

Many discussions on the mailing list, inside JWT as well as with partners from the SOA projects (Mangrove, BPMN, BPMN2, Stardust etc.).

Discussions with several companies (Bull, jBoss, EasiFab) have produced collaboration (ex. BPM model comparison, FactoryRegistry) and keep feeding JWT‘s requirements.

Solutions built on JWT include AgilPro and OW2 Scarbo (Open Source). Mailing list exchanges show new products being built on JWT.

The friend EasySOA community (http://www.easysoa.org) has worked in 2011-2013 on using JWT to design and model the business part of an SOA such as the EasySOA Registry models. This has produced the (not yet released) EMF2CMIS bridge to document management solutions.

Coordination with several OW2 projects such as Nuxeo, Talend, Bonita, Orchestra, FraSCAti, Spagic, Scarbo.

The University of Augsburg is an official Eclipse Foundation Member.

This release is part of Neon, Eclipse IDE 2019-06, Eclipse IDE 2019-09