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The Workbench

Getting Started

This tutorial shows you how to create your own light-weight process Workbench ideally suited for prototyping algorithms on process (and other) models. We assume that your are familiar with the Hello World tutorial.

A simple Workbench

Let's create a Java application that can host several ProcessEditor JPanels, provides a menu, icons, etc.:

import com.inubit.research.gui.Workbench;

public class workbench1 {

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        // Create a new Workbench
        Workbench wb = new Workbench();
        // And show the JFrame
        wb.setVisible(true);
    }
}

The lines of code required are even fewer than for Hello World, since the Workbench class is already a Java Application with a JFrame. The running program should look like this but just with an empty model. You can find the BPMN 2.0 Choreography auction model here.

The Preferences

The ProcessEditor as well as the corresponding Workbench use a preferences file for persisting properties. You can find a UI in the workbench at (tbd).

Change the Properties in the UI

Set the Properties via the API

Plugins: Implementing your own Algorithms

The workbench provides a number of Plugins, which can be easily extended. You can find the Plugins under the corresponding menu item. Just try them out with a few sample files (tbd).

Creating your own Plugin

A standard use-case of the Process Editor framework is writing a plugin for a certain model type. As you've seen above, a plugin can implement arbitrary algorithms on models, so it is suitable for prototyping an algorithm of a thesis. If you need your own model first, please check the corresponding tutorial. We will showcase a simple plugin that checks whether a given Petri net is a Workflow net.

To register a new plugin at the Workbench, just call the following method, in our case at the end of the main method (source workbench2.java):

		// Add custom Workflow net plugin
        wb.addPlugin(new workbench2plugin(wb));

The source code for the class workbench2plugin (source workbench2plugin.java):

public class workbench2plugin extends WorkbenchPlugin {
	import [...] // Your IDE will figure this out

    // Create a private variable for holding the Workbench instance
    private Workbench workbench;

    // Create new constructor to fetch workbench
    public workbench2plugin(Workbench workbench) {
        super(workbench);
        this.workbench=workbench;
    }

    @Override
    public Component getMenuEntry() {
        JMenuItem workflowNetsChecker = new JMenuItem("Check if Workflow net");
        // Add action
        workflowNetsChecker.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
            @Override
            public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
                // Get the current ProcessModel and check if it is of type PetriNet
                if (!(workbench.getSelectedModel() instanceof PetriNetModel)) {
                    JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "The selected model is not a Petri net!");
                }

                // Get Petri net
                PetriNetModel model = (PetriNetModel)workbench.getSelectedModel();

                // A Petri Net is a Workflow net if it has exactly one start node...
                java.util.List startPlaces = new LinkedList();

                // Iterate over all nodes to count start nodes
                for (ProcessNode node: model.getNodes()) {
                    if (node instanceof Place && model.getIncomingEdges(Edge.class, node).size()==0)
                        startPlaces.add(node);
                }

                // I guess you've got the idea and can implement the remaining checks yourself
                JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Found "+startPlaces.size()+" Start Places!");
            }
        });
        return workflowNetsChecker;
    }
}

Fitting Model Types and Plugins: Making it your Application

If you would like to use the workbench as a foundation for your own application, you can restrict the model types and plugins to the ones you need. The following handy lines of code allow you to create a stand-alone prototype that focuses on your plugin/algorithm:

		[...]

        // Set the title
        wb.setWorkbenchTitle("My Workbench");

        // Set the version
        wb.setWorkbenchVersion("1.0");

		[...]

A more advanced implementation might sub-class the workbench (tbd).