BlueDynamics Sponsors CMFOpenFlow

The world of Zope has long had two solid workflow options, giving it two more than most open source content management platforms. Unfortunately these two options -- OpenFlow and DCWorkflow -- are fundamentally different. At a workflow sprint in March, sponsored by DFKI, the two projects agreed to a common architecture, but no progress was made to implement it.

Thanks to BlueDynamics, this is changing. With a new project funded by BlueDynamics, Vincenzo Di Somma and Riccardo Lemmi at Reflab are moving OpenFlow onto the CMF architecture, creating a new product called CMFOpenFlow. The current OpenFlow is the popular workflow system for Zope created by iCube. The new CMFOpenFlow will also feature user interface integration into Plone.

"The integration of a workflow engine like OpenFlow into CMF/Plone, opens a whole new perspective for Zope/CMF programming," says Robert Boulanger, founder and managing director at BlueDynamics. "This enables the CMF not only to be a pure Content Management Framework. With this component it will be possible also to pursue new directions, such as collaborative systems and document archiving systems."

"The workflow sprint gave the roadmap for getting this done," says Vincenzo. "OpenFlow provides a standards-oriented approach to activity-based workflow. CMF gives a framework for content types that can participate in workflow, plus CMF is the proving ground for Zope 3. With a consistent interface from Plone, we have three ingredients for a compelling workflow story."

"I am delighted to see progress toward the goals we outlined in Saarbrucken", says Tres Seaver, head of the CMF project at Zope Corporation. "With this initiative, BlueDynamics and Reflab are adding a powerful new tool to the CMF workflow designer's toolbox. OpenFlow's activity-based workflows provide more natural solutions for some classes of business problems than the entity-based workflows provided by DCWorkflow."

The new OpenFlow will give CMF developers a workflow tool for CMF based on the architecture of OpenFlow. Workflow processes can be designed and instantiated which manage the transitions of content in a business process.

"CMFOpenFlow wil help developers not only in developing Zope applications in a fast and easy way but now they can also count on an activity-based workflow even for the creation of their CMF content and tools," says Vincenzo. "It will be simple to integrate it with other CMF tools. For example, it will be easy to put personal events into the calendar, and also workitems from our worklist, or refer to CMF content in instances of actvity-based procedures."

Workflow in Zope is scheduled for even more progress later this year. The consensus architecture will get implementation focus during a Zope 3 sprint in Rotterdam. The Rotterdam sprint will bring Florent, Vincenzo, and Jim Fulton together to bring strong workflow components and services to Zope 3.