AOP for Workfow Orchestration

At InfoQ, Oleg Zhurakousky from SpringSource has published an article about Workflow Orchestration Using Spring AOP and AspectJ. The article describes what is needed to implement a flow-like process, to make it flexible and configurable using AOP techniques. I would suggest this article to everyone who is dealing with data flow orchestration and batch processing at work.

Process is a collection of coordinated activities that lead to accomplishing a set goal

Oleg distinguishes the following attributes in his description:

• Activities - activities defining this process


• Shared data/context - defines mechanism to share data and facts accomplished by the activities


• Transition rule - defines which activity comes next after the end of previous activity, based on the registered facts


• Execution Decision - defines mechanism to enforce Transition rule


• Initial data/context (optional) - initial state of the shared data to be operated on by this process

This is actually very similar from what we experienced in designing batch processes using SpringFramework at Swedbank.
I'm happy to see that what we did looks very similar to the example from the article.