[Zope] Re. Generic Workflow Products?

[Spicklemire, Jerry]

Cary wrote:

> come to the realization that many applications boil
> down to workflow management.

The ZPatterns project the Phil Eby and Ty Sarna are running 
is intended to lay the groundwork for just what you want. 
They call it "SWARM", and if memory serves, the "W" is for 
"Workflow". ZPatterns has been incorporated into the next 
rev. of the Portal Tool Kit to some degree.

	http://www.zope.org/Members/pje/Wikis/ZPatterns/HomePage

	http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/


The discussion below is from:
	http://www.zope.org/Members/pje/Wikis/ZPatterns/SummarizedVersion

"	Other applications of ZPatterns

stevea: I'm using it to support a Product Line Infrastructure -- a bunch of
related applications that reuse bits of each other but in differnet
contexts. However, I've only got the first app so far :-)

JeffH?: We need to build a workflow system. We need to build a content
management system. We need to build a customer relationship management
system. I only want to build each one once. They must, at some point,
cooperate with each other depending on the context in which they are being
used.

roche: we also need to build a customer relationship system

rdmurray: We could probably use a community collaboration on a CRM project.

MrTopf?: wonders if he could use ZPatterns for his Groupware ideas..

	SWARM

pje: ZPatterns is the basis for another system Ty and I will be building,
called SWARM... State-based Workflow And Resource Management So, it is
probably a good match for other workflow apps.

stevea: I've seen that acronym somewhere inthe Wiki I think. Will SWARM be
open source or verio internal?

pje: Open source.

tsarna: (pje and I are arguing as to weather propertysheets on users already
work or not... hold on :)

pje: The idea is that there will be Plans, which have Phases, Events, and
Roles. Then "ObjectsWithPlans" will use the plan as a kind of state-based
attribute provider. You can actually do state-based stuff now, using just
GAPs?.

jean: I'm champing at the bit to show off something like SWARM at work.
Stuff like Journyx and an inhouse issue tracker are being pushed, and I feel
they're steps backwards. We're going to have to zopify some anyway, better
to invest more in it, not disperse across other cruft."

To me ZPatterns and SWARM represent an even higher level of Zope development
that
will impact Zope Deployment similarly to the way Visual Basic changed
Windows Development. Watching this take shape is kind of like knowing about
the Normandy Invasion about six months ahead of time.

Later,
Jerry S..