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Single Sign On (SSO) for Business Applications on Liferay with Glassfish

To integrate business applications into a Liferay portal infrastructure is a major challenge. One of the most common requests is a single sign on (sso). Once a user has logged into the portal he should also access business applications which run outside the portal container.  

With a new implementation of a "Imixs Login Module" it is now possible to integrate business application seamless into Liferay portal. The module makes use of the Liferay API to validate the user session and enables applications to authenticate users on any Java Enterprise application running in a Java EE 6 sever environment. The login module is implemented on the JSR-196 specification with is a standardized authentication mechanism for Java EE.

With the help of the Imixs Login Module it is not necessary to setup a complex single sign on server infrastructure. The Login module allows to use the existing user management of Liferay Portal server. We have tested the login module with GlassFish Application Server 3.1 and Liferay 6 on Windows and Linux plattform.

REST Service Examples

With the Imixs RESTfull service interface it is very easy to access any workflow instance. The following section gives some examples which can be tested live using the Imixs Online Demo.[Read More]

JQuery Mobile - JSON and Imixs Workflow

Today I would like to demonstrate how to build a HTML5 Web application for mobile phones. My example application will display business data from a back-end application provided by a RESTfull service interface. The data is in json format, which is a common data format especially for mobile applications. Here you can see the result:

[Read More]

How to change the MySQL Database Engine

When you are running Imixs Workflow on a Linux Server using MySQL the database default engine is typically 'MyISAM'. This is a fast engine type. 

But for transactional systems it is recommended to use a database engine which is supporting transactions. This database engine in MySQL is called 'InnoDB'. When you change the default engine type in your MySQL setup an new Imixs Workflow instance will create tables based on this engine type. But you can also simply change the engine type from 'MyISAM' to 'InnoDB' with a sql script:

ALTER TABLE `CALENDARITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `DOUBLEITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITYINDEX` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_CALENDARITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_DOUBLEITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_INTEGERITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_READACCESS` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_READACCESSENTITY` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_TEXTITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_WRITEACCESS` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `ENTITY_WRITEACCESSENTITY` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `INTEGERITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `READACCESS` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `READACCESSENTITY` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `TEXTITEM` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `WRITEACCESS` ENGINE = InnoDB;
ALTER TABLE `WRITEACCESSENTITY` ENGINE = InnoDB; 

This sql script did not connect to a specific database. For this reason it is necessary that you connect fist to the database the changes should be assigend. To run the script you can use the mysql command line tool in the following way:

First save the script into a local script file (e.g 'mysql_innodb_imixs'). This file will be called later from the mysql console.

Now connect into the mysql Server:

mysql -u root -p

next select the database where the engine should be changed:

mysql> connect mydatabase; 

finally you can run the script with the following command (assuming the you have stored the script before into a file named 'mysql_innodb_imixs' which is located in the current directory) :

mysql> source  mysql_innodb_imixs;
 

Thats it. Now you tables will use the new Database engine 'InnoDB'.

When you configure the JDBC Datapool connection from your Glassfish Server it is strongly recommended to use a 'javax.sql.XADataSource' connection. This DataSource type supports the transaction scope provided by the Imixs Workflow System.

How to post XML data to the Imixs Workflow RESTfull Service

Today I wrote a short example explaining how you can transform an external xml data structure with a xsl-template into the Imixs Workflow xlm format and post the data to the RESTfull Service Interface.

This is good example how a interface between an external system and the Imixs Workflow engine can be realized with a minimum of efforts.

http://www.imixs.org/xml/examples/transform_xml.html

Building Business Applications with Java EE 6 and Imixs Workflow

Imixs Workflow provides a workflow engine to implement human workflows. Human worflows are used in business applications when a business process is performed by different users. A ticket-system is a typical example for a workflow management system. Customers create a new ticket and the workflow system forwards the the ticket to a technical team to solve the ticket. After a member of the technical team has accepted and solved the ticket the workflow management system forwards the ticket to a quality manager to verify the solution. Finally the solution will be automatically forwarded to the customer. This is a simple example of human workflow inside a business application.

Imixs Workflow provides all the functionality to manage this kind of a business process. You can design the process with an eclipse based modeler to configure things like email notifications, security, dispatching and the process documentation.

The flowing tutorial shows how to run the Imixs Workflow engine in a Java EE 6 business application.[Read More]

New Java EE 6 Workflow Engine

With the latest release 3.0 Imixs provides now the first full Java EE 6 compliant workflow engine. The BPM solution can be used together with any of the newest Java EE web- or application servers like Glassfish 3.1, JBoss 6 or Geronimo.[Read More]

Imixs Workflow 3.0 - new project structure

As part of the new version 3.0 of the Imixs Workfow project the structure of the sub-projects will be simplified. In future only the artefacts

• imixs-workflow-core
  
• imixs-workflow-engine
• imixs-workflow-faces
  

will be necessary to include all relevant APIs.

This simplifies the deployment and makes it much easier to manage complex projects. As a side effect also conflicts with the version 2.x can be avoided. The new 3.x version will be based on JEE6 and includes new JPA entities and EJB components.

Watch the Imixs project site and issue-tracking for details about the next release!

Web Traffic Tool for Glassfish 3.1

Imixs provides a new solution for professional web traffic analyzing. The Open Source Project Manik-Web-Stat is a powerful new solution to analyze and compare web traffic log files. You can run this web application on JEE6 Web- or Applicaiton Servers like Glassfish 3.1, JBoss 6 or Geronimo. Furthermore you can also analyze access log files form older web- or applicationservers. 

In different to many other solutions you can analyze each detail of a web site or web application through flexible filters.

Imixs GmbH provides also professional services for enterprise solutions. (Contact).

Read more about Manik-Web-Stat

Next relase of Imixs Worklfow API

Today we released the final version of the Imixs-Workflow API 2.1.2 and the XML API 2.1.1. 

These two releases are now stable and include a lot of minor improvements in general handling and also affecting the XML processing. We recommend to use these releases instead of earlier releases. The XML release 2.1.1 is important to stable the Imixs REST Service API.

Lucene Search with Imixs Workflow

The latest snapshot release of Imixs JEE Workflow now supports Apache Lucene Search Engine. With this new fulltext search the Imixs Workflow reached a new level of a flexible and powerful workflow platform.

The Lucene search integration is provided by a new plugin which contains all the necessary functionality to access and manage a search index. Workitems are automatically added into the search index during a workflow step. A fulltext search is performed considering the fine-grained access rights for workitems managed by the Imixs Workflow Engine. This means that a search result contains only workitems which are accessible by the current user. The access level to a single workitem is fully controlled by the Imixs Workflow Manager and can be managed using the Imixs Workflow Modeler. This makes it easy to setup complex and secure business process applications and support also the flexibility of a fulltext search engine.

Admin Client 2.1.2 new SNAPSHOT release

The next Snapshot Release for the Imixs Admin Client 2.1.2 is available. 
This new release fixes some bugs with IIOP Exceptions during the EJB Remote Calls in Glassfish 3.1 
You can download the new Release from the Imixs Download Center:

http://java.net/projects/imixs-workflow/downloads

AdminClient 2.1.1 - final release

We just released the version 2.1.1 for the Imixs AdminClient. 

The new version (2.1.2) will provide a new local EJB interface which simplifies the administration of Workflow Instances. See http://java.net/projects/imixs-workflow for more details! 

Release 3.0 started

We are now starting the next release of the Imixs Workflow 3.0

See: http://java.net/jira/browse/IMIXS_WORKFLOW-90

The general idea behind the new 3.0 release was to make use of the new EJB 3.1 container features. Because the current Imxis EntityServiceBean is in some methodes a little bit deprecated. One reason was the early implementation in the beginning of JEE5. The JPA methods are optimized for Toplink Driver which is no longer supported. So its time to make an Update!

General requirements for the new Workfow Engine

• Replace the Entity Bean based on ItemCollection with a Map Interface
• Use of EJB 3.1 features (JPA Map Feature)
• Simplify the packaging (Light EJB API)
• Optimize Scheduler Feature (persist settings in a entity)
• No changes to the Workflow Service API - to make migration easy

Migration

A Migration is necessary as one of the main goals is to pesist no longer the ItemCollection Object but a simple portable Map Interface.
So we need a way to migrate application from Version 2.x to 3.0. As we learned in migrations from 1.x to 2.x this is not an easy work.
The goal of the new migration strategy must be a background migration.
So a tool should migrate workitems from a old datastorage into a new one running independed of a productive workflow app. This can be done by monitoring the $modified timestamp. As we know most of the data will not be changed during migration this can be done easily .

Please comment feedback directly into JIRA:

http://java.net/jira/browse/IMIXS_WORKFLOW-90

Imixs Workflow - Report Generator for PDF

With the latest version of Imixs Workflow now business reports can be created in a lot of different output formats like PDF, MS Excel, MS Word or any other XSL Transformation. Read more about the Imixs Workflow REST Interface and how it works.

http://www.imixs.org/xml/restservice.html

Imixs Workflow did not only empower you in building bpm solutions based on the JEE plattform. It also gives you a flexible architecture to fulfill business requirements like compliance features, creation of business reports and securing confidential business data in a fast and easy way.

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Up to 10 Recent Entries

• Single Sign On (SSO) for Business Applications on Liferay with Glassfish
• REST Service Examples
• JQuery Mobile - JSON and Imixs Workflow
• How to change the MySQL Database Engine
• How to post XML data to the Imixs Workflow RESTfull Service
• Building Business Applications with Java EE 6 and Imixs Workflow
• New Java EE 6 Workflow Engine
• Imixs Workflow 3.0 - new project structure
• Web Traffic Tool for Glassfish 3.1
• Next relase of Imixs Worklfow API

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