jBPM WebDesigner (BRMS) should allow opening of invalid BPMN2 files (or disallow saving them).

The jBPM WebDesigner in BRMS 5.3-ER6 allows one to save an invalid BPMN2 process definition. After you save the changes in BRMS/Guvnor, the following error is displayed: 400 Sorry, a technical error occurred. Please contact a system administrator.

After this error, one is unable to re-open the process in the designer. This basically means that one has no means inside BRMS/Guvnor to correct the error in the BPMN2 file. The current work-around that I use is to checkout the process definition from Guvnor in Eclipse/JBoss Developer Studio, open the previous version of the process from the history, copy the content to the checked-out process definition and commit the change. This is pretty ugly and not something one wants to offer to non-technical users.

I see 2 solutions, either the BPMN2 file should be better validated on a Save action in BRMS/Guvnor, or the WebDesigner should allow to open invalid BPMN2 files. The last option actually makes sense from an editor perspective. It is not really the editor's responsibility to only open files if they're valid. This is a compilation step, not an editor step.

I've attached 2 files. The "com.lettergen.bnp2.DemoProcess-valid.bpmn2" file is the valid file. The "com.lettergen.bnp2.DemoProcess-invalid.bpmn2" is the invalid file, created in the web-designer, that gets saved, but which can't be opened anymore.