Create a workflow with Akka

Question

In our Scala / Play application we use activiti . (also experimenting with camunda ) users can create workflows (shown in this figure http://camunda.com/ ). All calls to these external workflow mechanisms are wrapped in Scala Future (activiti and camunda APIs — all Java blocking APIs).

Is there any library for fully performing workflows using Akka / Actors while avoiding heavy toolkits like activiti / camunda? Or ideas, what is the best way to use Akka with activiti / camunda?

Answer 1

You can try using dcl Akka FSM to do the same thing bypassing activity, as well as block apis. see http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/snapshot/scala/fsm.html

Answer 2

Please note that camunda has very powerful asynchronous continuation functions that allow you to delegate any lengthy processing of background threads. This allows a very flexible configuration of "how much work" is performed synchronously in the client thread (possibly HTTP). This can provide a good balance between performance and fault tolerance.

Answer 3

I am aware of the existence of the Catify BPMN Engine built using Akka (Java). I have no experience with this, and I don’t know for sure if the API calls are asynchronous, but I would expect so. Since it was written in Akka, it should go well with Play !.