1 workflow systems at apnic how they help everyone robert loomans february 2, 2007
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Workflow Systems at APNICHow they help everyone
Robert Loomans <[email protected]>
February 2, 2007
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Contents
• What is a “workflow”?
• What is a “workflow system”?
• Why care?
• Workflows at APNIC
• Workflow systems at APNIC
• Where to from here?
• Summary
• Resources
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What is a “workflow”?
• Data
• State or Context
• Process…or Business Process
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Process
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What is a “workflow system”?
• Workflow model– Data store– Workflow definition– Programming API
• Workflow engine– Execution– Remote API?
• Modeling and analysis tools
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Why care?
• Structured development– Decouple different layers– More modular, reusable code– More definition and declaration
• More manageable operations– Less random cronjobs– Less scary direct poking in databases or files– Potential for better logging, stats and audit
trails– Privileged code running in one place– Access control
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Really, why care?
• Faster responses from APNIC and much better worst case
• Quicker fixes to broken processes
• More automation of common tasks
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Hype
Source: The State of Workflow by Tom Baeyens
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Workflows at APNIC
• External– New membership– Resource application– Help!– Membership renewal– Lame DNS delegations– Policy drafting
• Internal– Travel and leave requests– Expense claims– Purchasing– Software feature requests and bugs
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Workflow systems at APNIC
• Web forms Email– No structure
• Request Tracker
• Ad-hoc applications
• Workflow.pm
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• Trail of email messages
• Spam
• Little or no metadata
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Request Tracker
• Email gateway
• Spam
• Limited metadata
• Difficult to impose business processes
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Ad-hoc applications
• Slow development cycle
• Duplicated bugs
• Proliferation of cronjobs on multiple servers
• Difficult to change
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Workflow.pm
• Simple Perl module on CPAN
• Not a separate WFE
• XML workflow definition– States– Actions– Conditions
• Works but immature
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Billing renewal notifications
• Notices to members asking them to pay up
• Were done manually from an Excel spreadsheet
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QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
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How successful?
• Very– Happy finance staff– Happy software staff– Happy ops staff
• Found problems with existing data and processes
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Where to from here?
• Extend member workflow
• More workflows
• Workflow engine– Java, .NET or PHP– jBPM http://www.jboss.com/products/jbpm– OpenWFE http://www.openwfe.org/– con:cern http://con-cern.org/
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Resources
• The State of Workflow - Tom Baeyens http://www.jboss.com/products/jbpm/stateofworkflow
• Process Management Standards Overview - Michael zur Muehlen http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/Process_Management_Standards_files/frame.htm
• Open Source Workflow Engines in Java http://www.java-source.net/open-source/workflow-engines
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Summary
• Useful? Yes!
• Lots more to do, but definitely worthwhile even in a simple form
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Questions?