Chapter 1. Introduction

Important

6.4 Update 6 introduces a small change into the database schema. You must apply the bpms-6.4-to-7.0.sql script to your database before you run Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite or Red Hat JBoss BRMS 6.4.6. This script is located in the upgrade-scripts/<database-type> directory, available from the Red Hat JBOSS BPM Suite 6.4 Update 6 and the Red Hat JBOSS BRMS 6.4 Update 6 zip files which you can download from the Red Hat Customer Portal.

1.1. About Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite

Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite is an open source business process management suite that combines Business Process Management and Business Rules Management and enables business and IT users to create, manage, validate, and deploy Business Processes and Rules.

Red Hat JBoss BRMS and Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite use a centralized repository where all resources are stored. This ensures consistency, transparency, and the ability to audit across the business. Business users can modify business logic and business processes without requiring assistance from IT personnel.

To accommodate Business Rules component, Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite includes integrated Red Hat JBoss BRMS.

The list of supported configurations for Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite is available at the Red Hat Customer Portal.

1.2. What Is New in Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4

Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 is a minor release over the previous version 6.3. Noteworthy new features and improvements in this release are described below.

1.2.1. User Interface Improvements

  • Enum is now available as a type in Data Modeler in Business Central.
  • The Intelligent Process Server now allows filtering the containers based on status and GAV (Maven Group ID, Artifact ID, and version). For more information, see the Containers and Unmanaged Intelligent Process Server Environment sections of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Development Guide.
  • The guided rule editor now enables you to use formulas for composite field constraints. When adding constraints to a pattern, the Multiple Field Constraint selection (All of (and) and Any of (or)) supports the use of formulas in addition to expressions. For more information, see the WHEN Conditions in Guided Rule Templates section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 User Guide.
  • The process designer now allows you to perform copy and paste operations across different processes. For more information, see the Designing Process section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 User Guide.
  • Business Central can now be used to visualize and work with tasks and process instances running on an Intelligent Process Server instance. For more information, see the Unified Execution Servers section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Admnistration and Configuration Guide.

1.2.2. Core

  • Red Hat JBoss EAP 7 is supported and can be installed using only the deployable zip installation option. Support for Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite components on Red Hat JBoss EAP 7 is available in the following order:

    • Runtime engines embeddable and fully functional inside a Java EE application deployed on Red Hat JBoss EAP 7.
    • Execution servers running inside Red Hat JBoss EAP 7 container.
    • Business Central deployed and fully functional on Red Hat JBoss EAP 7.
  • The REST API of Intelligent Process Server was extended by operations for saving a user task and retrieving the saved content of the user task when needed to complete the user task. For more information, see the Managing User Tasks section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Development Guide.
  • Intelligent Process Server Client integration with JMS has been enhanced with the Fire and forget interaction option. Previously, the JMS requests were blocking input and output, holding the connection until the server side processing is done. With the Fire and forget option, messages get delivered to the server only if the transaction that invoked the server client was committed successfully. For more information, see Intelligent Process Server Java Client API Overview chapter in the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Development Guide.
  • Task variables can now be accessed from within a task event listener. For more information, see the Accessing Task Variables Using TaskEventListener section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Development Guide.
  • Business Central now provides automatic installation of the specified services from the service repository for process designer. For more information, see the Service Repository section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 User Guide.
  • Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite now supports process instance migration from one runtime manager to another. Process instance migration enables you to upgrade an active process instance to a newer version of the process definition. If the active nodes have changed, you can perform node mapping of active node instances within a process instance. For more information, see the Process Instance Migration section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Development Guide.
  • The Intelligent Process Server and Business Central can now be run using the same data source so that the work with process instances and tasks on the Intelligent Process Server is visualized in Business Central. You can configure the Intelligent Process Server to run with the same data source as Business Central using the installer. For the deployable package and packages of third-party JavaEE containers, the system properties are pre-configured but commented out. For more information, see the Unified Execution Servers section of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Admnistration and Configuration Guide.

1.2.3. Integration and Miscellaneous

  • The Google Chrome browser version 54.0.2840.7 is now supported.
  • Support for Russian and Traditional Chinese is no longer available for Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4.
  • Support for Java Development Kit (JDK) version 6 is no longer available for Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4.
  • Red Hat JBoss Developer Studio Integration Stack 10.0.0.GA supports Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4.
  • Red Hat JBoss Fuse 6.3 integration pack now includes and supports Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4.
  • The Update-04 for JBoss Operations Network (JON) 3.3 plugin is available for use with Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4.
  • Spring integration has been upgraded from Spring 3.x to 4.3.
  • KieScanner support is now available in Blueprint integration. For more information, see the Integration with Aries Blueprint chapter of the Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite 6.4 Admnistration and Configuration Guide.
  • Error messages while uploading spreadsheet as multi-bytes name have been improved. Asset names in error messages are now in a human-readable format and are easy to troubleshoot.