What is SWAMP?
SWAMP is a java-based workflow engine.
The workflows are defined in an XML format, with with
focus on great flexibility and the possibility for
quick and frequent changes.
The workflow engine is running on a central
server, with a web-GUI and a SOAP interface for human interaction
and for connecting it to other systems.
What are the advantages of SWAMP compared to the many other workflow engines?
SWAMP tries to be the better solution with regard to
convenience and flexibility of workflow definitions. As we have our own XML
workflow definition format, we do not have to bother with the overhead
of big process definition languages such as BPEL or XPDL. Another advantage is its
great extendibility through being open source.
Under which license is SWAMP released?
SWAMP is released under the
GPL, but depends on some
libs to be present in the system at runtime. They may have other
licenses:
- Java (Sun License)
- Graphviz (IBM Public License)
- JavaMail, Activation Framework, JDBC, JNDI (Sun License)
- Tomcat, Jakarta libs, Log4J (Apache Software License)
- SoapSWAMP is based on the axis framework:
- wsdl4j (IBM Public License)
- saaj, jaxrpc (Sun License)
Please look on the license page for further details.
Does SWAMP include a graphical process designer?
No, the workflow definition files have to be created manually at the moment.
But it is not that hard to create such a definition, please read
the manual
on how to create one.
There has been a Google Summer of Code project that started to create
a GUI process designer based on the eclipse framework.
Wiki page
and Subverion repository are available.
Does SWAMP support the academic workflow patterns?
Workflow patterns as described at
www.workflowpatterns.com
characterize possible solutions on how to implement given requirements
with a workflow engine.
There is a chapter in
this document
that tries to determine which of the
formal workflow patterns can be modelized with SWAMP.
It comes to the conclusion that most of the patterns can be used,
and the engine can be extended to support those slight patterns that
can not yet easily be modelled.
Has SWAMP proven to be reliable in a demanding environment?
SWAMP is the workflow management tool inside SUSE R&D / Novell.
They are tracking the complete cd-creation, maintenance (tracking of patches),
tracking of open job positions and tracking of Level3 support incidents
within one SWAMP instance.
This means ~15000 workflows and ~600 users at the moment.
I have found a bug / have a feature request!
If you have feedback to SWAMP, or want to contribute please do not hesitate
to contact swamp@suse.de or join our mailinglist.
For tracking bugs we use bugzilla:
- List of open SWAMP bugs.
- Report a new SWAMP bug
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