A presentation at WebSummit in in Lisbon, Portugal by Mia Moore
Orchestrate the Chaos: Process automation in modern architectures WebSummit Lisbon | November 15, 2023
Hello! ■ Technical Community Builder @ Camunda ■ Just moved from Austin, TX → Seattle, WA Mia Moore @xoMiaMoore they/them ■ Fun fact: I love birdwatching
Poll ■ How many consider themselves technical? ■ How many here use microservice architectures? ■ Has anyone struggled to explain or understand data flow/logic, especially between technical and non-technical teams? ■ Has anyone heard of BPMN? DMN? BPM? ■ Has anyone heard of Camunda?
What is “Modern Software Architecture”?
Modern architecture designs are great at optimizing resource usage …
… now diagram the business logic / data flow …
Image: https://rastko.tech/microservices/sre/monitoring/alerting/observability/programming/architecture/solutions/2020/09/12/monitoring-microservice-data-flows.html
Image: (“Microservices” - KRAZAM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ
Hard problems to solve Documentation Data flow diagrams look like spaghetti Timers Alerts, stuck/idle processes, notifications Interrupting messages Your application is already executing code, but something has changed and you need to interrupt it and handle it differently Changes to business logic All your services are running nicely together, but now a new service is added that integrates with other existing services
Forget services and infrastructure. Let’s think about it in terms of processes.
Processes? “… a collection of related, structured activities or tasks performed by people or equipment.”
Order fulfillment process
Real World Scenario
Truck Permits A local municipality needs to issue permits to trucking companies: ● Trucking company fills out a form ● A price is determined for the permit ● The company pays for the permit ● The permit is issued
Truck Permits A local municipality needs to issue permits to trucking companies: ● Trucking company fills out a form -> UserForm microservice ● A price is determined for the permit -> PermitMatch microservice ● The company pays for the permit -> Payments microservice ● The permit is issued -> IssuePermit microservice
New requirement! “We need the permit turned into a PDF, and email notifications to the user and to us.”
Truck Permits A local municipality needs to issue permits to trucking companies: ● ● ● ● Trucking company fills out a form -> UserForm microservice A price is determined for the permit -> PermitMatch microservice The company pays for the permit -> Payments microservice The permit is issued -> IssuePermit microservice -> PDF microservice -> Email microservice
New requirement! “A user tried to fill in the form, but it didn’t match a permit!”
New requirement! “If they don’t pay in X days, the permit needs to be canceled!”
How might you solve this?
s s e n i s u B Introducing BPMN l e d o M s Proces n o i t a t o and N Maintained spec Visualization ISO/IEC 19510 spec maintained by OMG (Object Management Group) Easily understand complex processes; no more spaghetti! Bridge communication Simplify discussions with stakeholders; unify design and implementation
Remember this? “If they don’t pay in X days, the permit needs to be canceled!”
… That’s great, dude, but that’s just a diagram.
… or is it?!
BPMN Engines (Workflow Management Systems)
Many options to choose from Image: https://bpmn-miwg.github.io/bpmn-miwg-tools/
Camunda - The Universal Process Orchestrator Orchestrate Automate Transform Complex process flows across people, systems and devices. Any process, anywhere. Your organization toward a digital future. Collaborate Flexibility All Endpoints Human Work AI Business Rules Micro Services RPA API IoT Systems (legacy + homegrown)
The state of a process is managed by the workflow engine, not the application. The data is managed by the application, not the engine.
New requirement! “For some permits, they need additional approval before collecting payment.”
New requirement! “Oh, and we should probably send a payment reminder before we cancel the permit.”
Errors and reminders
That was easy!
Let’s review 1 BPMN 2 BPMN Engines 3 Simplified management Open spec that defines processes in an organized, understandable way. Execute the process as drawn, connecting tasks to external services. State of each process is controlled by the engine, not the application. Easily add additional tasks without changing existing application; engines provide management tools to monitor performance etc.
Visit the Camunda booth! Booth #E228 Play trivia, donate to charities Ask questions
Questions?
Resources ● Camunda Academy – free courses on BPMN and Camunda ● BPMN 2.0 documentation ● Camunda Code Studio on YouTube ● Camunda Forum
A recent (2022) poll by Kong placed the average number of microservices for an enterprise at 184! Modern architecture patterns are great at optimizing resource usage, but what happens when you need to make a change to one process that spans multiple shared services? In this talk, we’ll discuss how to approach problems as processes, not systems, to solve complex business processes in your application. Everyone should leave this talk with a new approach to solving their orchestration complexities!
for free. You
can too.