Flowable platform map
The router — which engine answers this question?
| Question | Engine | Artifact | Course phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| In what order do steps happen, who/what does each? | BPMN | .bpmn20.xml |
1–4, 7, 8 |
| What work is available, human picks order? | CMMN | .cmmn |
6 |
| Given these inputs, what’s the answer? | DMN | .dmn |
5 |
| What outside event starts/continues work? | Event registry | .event + .channel |
7 |
Cross-references (all by key, all independently versioned)
- BPMN → DMN: decision task (
decisionTableReferenceKey) - CMMN → BPMN: process task (
processRef) - BPMN → CMMN: case service task
- Event registry → BPMN/CMMN: event-registry start events & catches
Shared machinery (learn once, applies to all)
- One relational DB; runtime vs history split (Phase 2 / 9.01)
- Job executor family: async, timers, dead letters (2.04, 9.03)
- Service/API idioms: Repository / Runtime / Task / History, Java + REST
- Deployment & versioning semantics (Phase 8)
Lineage & editions
- Flowable is a 2016 fork of Activiti by its original authors. The BPMN engine’s lineage goes back to 2010.
- Open source: all four engines plus REST — everything this course uses.
- Flowable Work / Design: commercial modelers, task/admin UIs, and orchestration conveniences on the same engines. Evaluate this layer for UI/velocity (Phase 10, lesson 05), not for engine capability.
Modelling smells → wrong column
| Smell | Move to |
|---|---|
| business rules in script tasks / gateway constants | DMN |
| BPMN diagram that’s mostly optional, order-free tasks | CMMN (but read 6.04 first) |
| hand-rolled Kafka consumer that starts processes | event registry |
| CMMN case that’s really a fixed sequence | BPMN |