BPMN 2 XPDL

Copyright © Jason Woodruff.  Visit the original at http://jasonwoodruff.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/bpmn-2-xpdl/

The topic of process designers that support persistence of the process as XPDL is a common item on forums [here, here, here, ]. Typically the enquirer is seeking a free/open source tool.

I suspect this is because BPMN is an entry point into BPM for business users.  Probably the users do not have a BPM system at work, but they perhaps see that gaining competence in BPMN is going to be useful in the future and therefore see it as a personal development need for them.  Alternatively they might be students, again with no particular engine to design for, but with a wish to explore the technology.  Across the globe the number of users in these categories possibly exceeds the numbers of non-technical users actively designing processes for execution.

Now, if you are going to go to the trouble of learning BPMN you are likely going to draft a few processes that are meaningful and useful to your needs.  Hence, you are likely to want to persist the designs in the expectation that one day, sometime in the future, your organisation might just have an engine to which you could deploy your efforts.

Thus, we see this topic cropping up again and again on the forums.

So, to help, and to also inform my own knowledge and awareness of the market, I thought I would list all the BPMN designers that are free to download and use and provide the facility to save as XPDL.  This list will no doubt be incomplete.  If I’ve missed one then please let me know (see below).

The debate about whether XPDL actually is the best exchange format for BPMN continues, and there are competing visions for BPMN 2.0 and here, but for the business user pragmatism rules, and currently XPDL provides an available solution that is likely to be supported by the vendors into the foreseeable future.

Finally, XPDL is one thing, but what about WYDIWYE – what you draw is what you execute.

BPMN 2 XPDL

Open source:

http://wiki.eclipse.org/JWT_Proposal
They have this functionality on their road map. I don’t think it is implemented just yet.  There is also some collaboration between open source BPMN designers on the Eclipse platform.

Closed source:

http://www.activemodeler.com/AvantageFoundation Kaisha-Tec have a free ‘Home’ edition (for BPM?) that requires registration.

http://www.bizagi.com This product is based on .Net platform, so you need to download and install MS .Net Framework 2.0.  This only flies with Windows.  Website is also hugely irritating, but I guess that’s personal taste.  Free product can be downloaded here.

http://www.sungard.com/expcarnot/ Sungard Infinity Process Workbench.  Eclipse-based.  30-days limited product version available to download following registration.

http://www.tibco.com/devnet/business_studio/default.jsp Tibco Business Studio.  Can be downloaded here following registration and acceptance of license.  Eclipse-based.

http://www.itp-commerce.com/ ITP have an extension for MS Visio, but of course you need to have MS Visio installed to use this, so that doesn’t really fit into the free category.

http://bpms.intalio.com Intalio have XPDL on their roadmap.  Their Eclipse-based designer is easy to install and use, but requires registration.

Fujitsu Interstage and Global 360 Process Sketchpad may have downloadable designers, but I’ve yet to find a link!

There are others I’m sure.  For myself I’m starting to use Tibco’s product to model processes for a software service I’m working on, but I’ll not be deploying to Tibco’s engine.  I’ll switch to and support open source efforts as an ‘early adopter’ as soon as a functional product becomes available.