Working with jBPM-BPEL in JBoss

If you install JBoss SOA Platform Standalone 5.0, it comes with ESB and jBPM-jPDL. The default support for BPEL is missing. To support BPEL you need to download the jbpm-bpel-1.1.GA.zip which was created in 2007. Unfortunately this is not certified with 5.0 and the last version that is supported is 4.2.2.

Note(update on April6 2010) : All the tasks below have become redundant as JBoss released RiftSaw2.0 on March31. http://www.jboss.org/riftsaw. This is a BPEL engine that supports 2.0 spec. It also comes with a BPEL designer as Eclipse plugin. So, you should be using this till it is packaged with the JBoss SOA Platform.

So I installed JBoss 4.2.2 in the same machine to deploy the jBPM BPEL. When you try to install it on the same machine you will come across  the port binding conflicts. You will have to patiently resolve them. If you have a choice you will be better off to install on a separate machine.

To install the jbpm-bpel, you need to extract the jbpm-bpel-1.1.GA.zip.  In the jbpm-bpel-1.1.GA\config\jbpm.hibernate.cfg.xml, you need to update the following properties

• hibernate.connection.datasource should point to the correct datasource. In my case it is Oracle, so java:/OracleDS
• org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect should point to the correct dialect. Since it is Oracle, I set it to org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect

To deploy the ear file, do the following

• Update the oracle-ds.xml to connect to the databse.
• Copy the [DB]-ds.xml to the C:\jboss-4.2.2.GA\server\default\deploy folder.
• Update the jbpm-bpel-1.1.GA\config\build.properties file
• Run ant deploy.ear. This deploys the ear file in JBoss

Go to http://localhost:9090/jbpm-bpel/ to see the console
Click on "Database Connection" and "Create Schema". This will create the schema.

Now you are all set to start working on BPEL.
I found the document BPEL quickstart with Eclipse Designer useful to start.