Flowable
| Company type | Open-source software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Workflow automation, Business process management |
| Predecessor | Activiti (software) |
| Founded | October 2016 |
| Products | BPMN Engine, CMMN Engine, DMN Engine, Flowable Design |
| Website | flowable |
Flowable is an open-source workflow engine developed in Java that runs business processes specified using BPMN 2.0 standards. It originated as a actively maintained derivative of Activiti (software).
History
In October 2016, the primary developers behind Activiti (software) departed from Alfresco (software) and initiated the Flowable Open Source project by creating a fork from Activiti's codebase.
The first release of Flowable, version 5.22, was derived from Activiti 5.21 and introduced the concept of Transient Variables. The significant milestone release, Flowable 6.0, was based on Activiti 6 beta 4 and included a complete overhaul of the core process virtual machine, resulting in improved scalability and performance tailored for enterprise BPM solutions.
Components
The platform consists of several modular parts designed to operate cohesively:
- BPMN Engine, serving as the principal Business Process Model and Notation workflow executor
- CMMN Engine, dedicated to processing Case Management Model and Notation
- DMN Engine, which supports a portion of the Decision Model and Notation rule execution
- Flowable Design, a cloud-hosted graphical tool for creating and modifying BPMN, CMMN, and DMN models
Differences between Version 5 and Version 6
Notable improvements introduced in Flowable 6 include:
- An abstracted persistence mechanism compatible with both relational and NoSQL databases
- Direct one-to-one correspondence between BPMN diagrams and executable commands
- A streamlined execution tree that facilitates simpler process inspection and control
- A unified agenda system coordinating process execution flows
- Job execution managed via queues to boost efficiency
- Inclusion of Ad hoc Sub Processes functionality
- Enhanced dynamic process execution allowing more adaptable workflows