Model Structure

When designing your models, you will rely on projects and modules:

• GO-BPMN projects are the top-level containers; they resembles a directory and as such can contain other directories. But primarily they will hold your modules. Unlike modules, projects are not deployed to the server and do not influence module deployment or execution. Generally, one project should be sufficient.
• Modules hold the definition files with model resources used for execution, such as, processes, data types, variables, etc. and are deployed to the server.

Consider keeping your model apart from other resources of your project. When planning your model structure, consider the recommended best practise

Note: We often use the term model and model instance: a model is the object that you can run on the server, run meaning you can create its model instances: It holds the static data serves as a blueprint for the model instances, while model instances hold the runtime data, for example, a model holds a process with an Activity and definitions of global variables, while its model instance will hold the data on whether the Activity is running and the current value of the variable. On design time, the model is an executable module with all its resources including any imported modules.

GO-BPMN Project Structure

GO-BPMN Projects

GO-BPMN projects are folders that can hold Modules (also library modules) and a few definition files which require different workspace resources, such as, (Export Configurations).

Project content does not depend on other resources and therefore it cannot access content in other projects. If you require in your project content of another project, you will need to reference it).

Creating GO-BPMN Projects

To create a GO-BPMN project, do the following:

1. Click File > New GO-BPMN Project.

   Alternatively, open the context menu in the GO-BPMN Explorer and click New > GO-BPMN Project.

2. In the New GO-BPMN Project dialog box, in the Project name text box, enter the project name.

   Note: The GO-BPMN Libraries box displays the libraries and their modules included in the project. The Standard Library is included by default.

   

   Creating a new GO-BPMN project
3. Click Next.
4. On the Project References page, select the project, which the new project can reference.
5. Click Finish.

Closing GO-BPMN Projects

Closing GO-BPMN projects makes projects and their content “invisible” for tools and that including the validation tool.

To close a project, right-click it in the GO-BPMN Explorer and select Close Project. To open a closed project proceed analogously.

Referencing Projects

Project content does not depend on other resources and therefore it cannot access content in other projects. If you require in your project content of another project, for example, you want to import its modules, into you module, you can reference it: Note that referencing will copy the resources into your Projects and the module imports will be copies of the original modules, not references.

If a project references another project, it can use its content (import its Modules). Projects may reference each other.

To reference a project:

1. In the GO-BPMN Explorer, right-click the project, in which you want to reference another project and select Properties.
2. In the left pane of the Properties dialog box, select Project References.
3. In the Project References page, select the projects to be referenced.

Note: When referencing projects, make sure the modules in the project have different names.

You may import modules of the referenced projects into modules of the parent project.

GO-BPMN Modules

GO-BPMN Modules are reusable units that hold definition and configuration files and can represent a Model. Similarly to packages in Java, they serve to organize resource files to logical bundles that can import each other.

Creating GO-BPMN Modules

To create a GO-BPMN module:

1. Go to File -> New -> GO-BPMN Module.

   You may also use the context menu of the respective GO-BPMN project.

2. In the New GO-BPMN Module dialog box, select the parent GO-BPMN project.
3. In the Module name text box, type the module name.

4. Select or unselect executable module checkbox.

   

   New GO-BPMN Module dialog box

5. Click Finish.

   Click Next and define module imports, libraries or modules, if required.

Note that the Module has its properties set to default values: its version set to 1.0 and there is no terminate condition.

Specifying Module Properties

To specify a module version, terminate condition, and a free-text description:

1. In the GO-BPMN Explorer view, right-click the module.
2. In the context menu, select Properties.
3. In the Properties dialog box, click GO-BPMN in the left part of the dialog box.

4. In the General tab, define the Module properties:

   • Module version: a module with a particular version is considered a different module on upload (modules with different versions can coexist in the server Module repository)

   • Executable module: if true, the Module can be instantiated as a Model

     Only a module that is executable can become a model instance

   • Create process log: if selected, the process logs its runtime data into the database

     If you disable the setting, runtime data of the Model instance will not include Module data (for example, no data on process instances nor their diagrams will be available). This setting is intended for production environments.

     Note that the setting can be overridden by the CREATE_PROCESS_LOG setting in the database.

   • Terminate condition: a condition which has to be true throughout the entire life of the model instance (condition in module imports are ignored)
   

   General tab of the Properties dialog box
   Alternatively, you can modify the module properties in its Properties view (in GO-BPMN Explorer, select the module and edit the data in the Properties view).

Importing Modules

Module import allows a module to use resources of other modules.

Note that imported executable Modules are instantiated along with their importing executable Module: The system creates a model instance with 2 or more Module contexts.

To import a module of the same or a referenced project, do the following:

1. In the GO-BPMN Explorer, right-click the target module you wish and click Module Imports.

   

   Imports tab with a list of imported modules
2. On the Imports tab, click Add.

3. In the Add New Import dialog box, in the Select a module to import box, select the module to be imported (expand the tree if necessary).

   To add several modules, double-click every module.

4. Click OK.
5. Back in the Properties dialog box, click OK.

To remove a module import, in step 2 select the module and click Remove.

Viewing Module Dependencies

When referencing projects and importing modules, the relationships between them can become relatively complicated and difficult to follow in the GO-BPMN Explorer. To allow you to view such relationships in a comprehensive way, the modeling tool provides the Module Dependency View. The view shows a diagram of projects and modules and their relationships.

To display the view, go to Window > Show View Module Dependency View.

To simplify the module relationships depiction, hide the transitive relationships by clicking the Show Transitive Reduction and pick the Module you are interested in in the Display dependencies of module drop-down box.

Module Dependency View with Transitive Reduction Activated and Deactivated

Module Dependency View with Transitive Reduction Activated and Deactivated