Deployment Guide

The following section gives an overview how to deploy the Imixs-Workflow engine into a Jakarta EE container. Imixs-Workflow consists of different modules which simply can be bundled together with other components of a business application. All Imixs-Workflow components are based on the Jakarta EE and the Eclipse Microprofile component model.

The examples illustrate how to deploy the components on a Wildfly Application server which is an open source application server based on the Jakarta EE specification. The deployment is similar to all other application servers (e.g. Glassfish, Payara…).

The Imixs-Workflow engine is based on JDK 1.8. The packaging will differ in some details depending on the environment you use. To deploy the Imixs-Workflow engine on a specific platform see also the chapters:

Imixs-Workflow components

To bundle the Imixs-Workflow engine together with a business application the following components need to be added into the deployment:

  • imixs-workflow-core-x.x.x.jar - contains the core api and xml api
  • imixs-workflow-engine-x.x.x.jar - the workflow engine containing jpa and ejb components
  • imixs-workflow-jax-rs-x.x.x.jar - contains the Imixs RESTful Web Service

For JSF Web Applications add also:

  • imixs-workflow-faces-x.x.x.jar - contains optional JSF components

All artifacts can be downloaded from the Maven central repository page. In case of maven the components will be downloaded and bundled automatically during the maven build process.

Search Index

The Imixs-Workflow engine includes a search index based on the Lucene Search Technology. The search index is used to query documents. There are two different index implementations available:

  • imixs-workflow-index-lucene-x.x.x.jar - Search index based on the Lucene Core engine
  • imixs-workflow-index-solr-x.x.x.jar - Search index based on Lucene Solr

The Lucene-Core index is the default index for Imixs-Workflow it can be deployed by teh

Building an Web Application (WAR)

To install and deploy the Imixs-Workflow engine into a web application it is sufficient to bundle the Imixs-Workflow components into the WEB-INF/lib folder. This is called the “EJB Lightweight Runtime Environment”. To customize the deployment the deployment descriptor ejb-jar.xml can be added into to WEB-INF/ folder. The persitence.xml is placed into the /WEB-INF/classes folder:

  / 
  +- WEB-INF/
  |  |- ejb-jar.xml  (optional)
  |  +- lib/
  |  |  |- imixs-workflow-core-x.x.x.jar
  |  |  |- imixs-workflow-engine-x.x.x.jar
  |  |  |- imixs-workflow-faces-x.x.x.jar
  |  |  |- imixs-workflow-jax-rs-x.x.x.jar
  |  |  |- imixs-workflow-index-lucene-x.x.x.jar
  |  |  |- ....
  |  +- classes/
  |  |  +- META-INF/
  |  |  |  |- persistence.xml

The following example shows the maven dependencies used in a maven project:

...
<properties>
	<org.imixs.workflow.version>5.1.9</org.imixs.workflow.version>
</properties>
... 
<dependencies>
<!-- Imixs Workflow -->
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.imixs.workflow</groupId>
		<artifactId>imixs-workflow-engine</artifactId>
		<version>${org.imixs.workflow.version}</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.imixs.workflow</groupId>
		<artifactId>imixs-workflow-jax-rs</artifactId>
		<version>${org.imixs.workflow.version}</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.imixs.workflow</groupId>
		<artifactId>imixs-workflow-index-lucene</artifactId>
		<version>${org.imixs.workflow.version}</version>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

The latest versions can be found in the Maven repository.

Adding a Database connection

Finally the persistence.xml file need to be added into the ejb or web module. The persistence.xml defines how the entity beans managed by the Imixs-Workflow Engine which will be persisted into the database.

persistence.xml in a web module

If the imixs-workflow-engine.jar is bundled directly into a web module, the persistence.xml need to be placed into the WEB-INF/classes/META-INF folder:

  /
  +- WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/
  |  |- persistence.xml
  +- WEB-INF/lib/
  |  |- imixs-workflow-core-x.x.x.jar
  |  |- imixs-workflow-engine-x.x.x.jar

persistence.xml in a ejb module

In case the imixs-workflow-engine.jar is bundled into a EJB module of an enterprise archive (ear), the persistence.xml need to be placed into the /META-INF folder together with the ejb-jar.xml:

  +- META-INF/
  |  |- MANIFEST.MF
  |  |- ejb-jar.xml
  |  |- persistence.xml

How to configure the persistence.xml

The persistence.xml describes the location of the database and the entity beans to be persisted. The following example shows a typical configuration using the Eclipselink driver:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="1.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence">
	<persistence-unit name="org.imixs.workflow.jpa" transaction-type="JTA">	
		<provider>org.eclipse.persistence.jpa.PersistenceProvider</provider>	
		<jta-data-source>jdbc/workflow</jta-data-source>
		<jar-file>lib/imixs-workflow-engine-${org.imixs.workflow.version}.jar</jar-file>
		<properties>
			<property name="eclipselink.target-database" value="Auto" />
			<property name="eclipselink.ddl-generation" value="create-tables" />
			<property name="eclipselink.deploy-on-startup" value="true" />
			<property name="eclipselink.logging.level" value="INFO" />	
		</properties>				
	</persistence-unit>
</persistence>

The following section gives a short overview about the different settings used by the persistence.xml:

persistence-unit:

The persistence unit name is fixed defined by the Imixs-Workflow implementation and need to be set to “org.imixs.workflow.jpa”.

jta-data-source:

The jta-data-source points to a JNDI Database resource located on the application server. This JNDI Name is a JDBC Resource which is provided by the application server running the application.

jar-file:

The jar-file defines the java library containing the Entity Beans to be persisted into the Database. This tag should always point to the imixs-workflow-engine Jar File. The version number must match the deployed component version.

In the example the jta-data-source point to a JDBC Resource with the JNDI Name ‘jdbc/workflow’. The jar-file points to the imixs-workflow-engine.jar part of your application.