Getting started
The IX JEE Workflow Server Implementation is useful to build workflow applications in a fast and flexible way. The Implementation consists of different parts like the Persistence API, the Engine based on EJB Session Beans and also the Web Service Interfaces.
So the kind of usage depends also form the goals in your individual Project. The following section should help you to decide how to work with the components of this project.
Using the IX JEE Workflow out of the Box
Using the IX JEE Workflow out of the Box is a good starting point to use the workflow engine without modification or JEE development.
See Installation for informations how you can install the Workflow engine and the Test Client. After that you can access the workflow during the Web Service Interfaces from any other Environment. The IX Ajax Client is a good example how a HTML Client can access this Workflow Engine without any JEE Development. So using the IX JEE Workflow out of the Box can help you to play with this technology.
Using the IX JEE Workflow in a JEE / JSF Project
Using the IX JEE Workflow in a JEE project is the typical way to use this Workflow Engine. In this kind of usage you build a JEE Project. Inside your Application you integrate the IX JEE Workflow components in different modules like Web and EJB modules in a EAR module. See the IX JEE Tutorials for further Informations.
As the IX JEE Workflow is build up on the JEE specification it consists of standard JEE components like EJBs and Web Services. The IX JEE Workflow Deployment section will describe how to build an Enterprise Application Module (EAR) using the Imixs IX JEE Workflow Modules in more detail.
Using the IX JEE Workflow to implement new modules
As the IX JEE Workflow is a Open Source project it allows you also to use the results of this project for individual implementations of Workflow Engines. In this case you extend the Implementation with additional features or a different behavior.
So in different of the usage described before you need more than a running instance of the Workflow Engine or the libraries of the JEE Components. In this kind of usage you should check out the source code packages and set up a JEE Project like the IX JEE TestClient. With this Client you can test the different parts of the implementation and extend the Workflow Manager and Model manager. The Source Code Projects include also JUnit tests which can help you to test different behaviors of the Engine in more detail.
See the IX JEE API Documentation for details and coding concepts. Also take a look in the Forum to discuss features, requests or bugs.
