The Imixs-Workflow Engine

The Imixs-Workflow engine consists of different service components. Each component maps a specific functionality into your workflow application:

  • The WorkflowService → the core component to create and update a process instance
  • The ModelService → the management component for BPMN models.
  • The DocumentService → the data access layer to store workflow related data
  • The ReportService → a service component to create data reports

All services can either be injected into a Java Enterprise application or can be accessed through its RESTfull service API.

Further more, all services are subject to the Imixs-Workflow Security Model. In this way only an authenticated access to these service components is allowed. This concept ensures the protection of your business data.

The WorkflowService

The WorkflowService is the core service to create, update and read a process instance. To create a process instance a workitem is assigned to a BPMN 2.0 model definition managed by the ModelService.

@EJB
WorkflowService workflowService;
ItemCollection workitem=new ItemCollection().model("1.0.0").task(100).event(10);
workitem=workflowService.processWorkItem(workitem);

Read more about in the section Imixs WorkflowService.

The DocumentService

The DocumentService is the general persistence layer of the Imixs-Workflow engine and provides an interface to store, load and query data objects (Documents) within a database. The DocumentService is independent from the workflow engine and can not only be used to persist a process instance (workitem), but also any other kind of business data, not necessarily associated with the workflow engine (e.g configuration data).

@EJB
DocumentService documentService;
ItemCollection myDocument=new ItemCollection;
myDocument.setItemValue("type","product");
myDocument.setItemValue("name","coffee");
myDocument=documentService.save(myDocument);

The DocumentService provides also a Full-Text-Search. In this way documents can be accessed through a search query:

List<ItemCollection> result=documentService.find("(type:'workitem')(imixs*)");

Read more about in the section DocumentService.

The ModelService

The ModelService provides methods to manage BPMN model definitions. A model can be created with the Eclipse based modeling tool Imixs-BPMN.

@EJB
ModelService modelService;
InputStream inputStream = new FileInputStream(new File("ticket.bpmn"));
ticketModel = BPMNParser.parseModel(inputStream, "UTF-8");
modelService.addModel(model);

The ModelService is used internally by the WorkflowService but can also be used by your application to navigate through a model definition.

@EJB
ModelService modelService;
Model ticketModel = modelService.getModel("ticket-1.0.0");
List<ItemCollection> tasks = modelService.findAllTasks();

Read more about in the section ModelService.

The ReportService

The ReportService component supports methods to create, find and execute business reports created with the Eclipse based Imixs-Workflow Modeler. A report is used to generate aggregated information from data objects managed by the DocumentService.