Switchyard should work with the remote API available in BPMS

Initial attempts to build a reference architecture met with failure as the two products hadn't been tested in the expected real-world deployment scenario using the remote API.

Please see below for details.

Babak Mozaffari ( babak@redhat.com ) should be contacted for details and to see if sample application is still available for testing.

"Technical background, feel free to ignore:

Based on my research and local prototyping, as well as consultation with BPMS engineering, the best way to make remote calls to the BPMS platform would be by using the “org.kie.remote” module or more precisely, kie-services-client. This client library allows the use of the BPMS API along with the defined data model and uses REST HTTP or JMS underneath to delegate the calls to the remote platform. This is more or less the same API that I’ve used in the mortgage demo (aka BigApp) for BPMS in the form of a client jar.

Using this approach from a standalone Java client requires adding a number of (i.e., twenty) jar files which including 3 KIE libraries, a couple of base Drools and RESTEasy libraries and some common Apache and Java EE libraries. Any client application deployed to a third party application server or even to EAP 6 would also bundle these libraries (or install them as modules) to satisfy the dependency.

Things are more complicated in FSW as it already includes partial support for some of the BPMS libraries. More specifically, most of the org.kie module is already included and automatically made available to any Switchyard application, as it needs to be to provide support for BPM implementation and so on. However all BPMS libraries are not included. Furthermore, those libraries that are included, are provided in the “system” class loader so adding the missing libraries is not as simple as bundling them in our application or providing a JBoss deployment descriptor that references them as installed modules. In short, it is not just our application but probably the Switchyard container that would need to have these libraries. I opened a bugzilla case for this at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1051739 and discussed it with Kevin. It is also Keith’s opinion that the change would not be very simple and even if a workaround was found in the current release, other roadblocks would be likely.

Loose integration with FSW by treating it as an unknown REST server might be possible but would not be idea."