1

Maybe I'm comparing potatoes with apples. I'm working with YAWL, a workflow language that is based on Petri net.

I'm at the very start of beginning to understand it, but there's a point that I doesn't catch: what is the difference of a "classic" clustered system - or a cloud or grid system - and a Petri net?

I mean, for example, what are the differences of a clustered system of a Django webapp, for example, and a webapp written in YAWL?

Edit

I found this business process management engine, Activiti, integrable in Spring Boot. What are the differences between a webapp written in YAWL and a webapp written in Spring Boot + Activiti?

Marco Sulla
  • 15,299
  • 14
  • 65
  • 100

1 Answers1

1

As mentioned in a comment, Petri nets are abstract mathematical models. They have nothing to do with clusters or webapps, unless you want to model a cluster or webapp as a Petri net.

YAWL and the tools around it seem to implement a workflow engine, with some interfaces to webapps. That means you can define workflows in a graphical environment, and somehow bring them into the web without writing a lot of code. It's a domain-specific solution.

Django is a general web framework. You can do all kinds of stuff with it, not just workflows. But you have to write the code for whatever you want to do.

Roland Weber
  • 3,395
  • 12
  • 26
  • But it's only a matter of coding convenience? I mean, YAWL gives you a graphical interface that render it more simple, while in Django you have to reinvent the wheel? – Marco Sulla Jun 21 '19 at 13:09
  • @MarcoSulla It's the age-old choice between convenience and flexibility+control. If you want full control, code everything in assembler. A programming language is more convenient, but you loose control over the machine code. A graphical UI builder gives you more convenience, but you loose more control. And as soon as you want to do something that the grahical UI builder doesn't support, you're screwed. Django has wheels, but you're asking about building a truck or a bicycle or an airplane. YAWL builds workflows, but not content management systems, for example. – Roland Weber Jun 21 '19 at 19:58
  • But Django, or a CMS, can't build trucks, bicycles and airplanes if they want? – Marco Sulla Jun 22 '19 at 12:58
  • What other people said to me that the main advantage of YAWL is that also a non-programmer can change the business logic. I'm a bit doubtful about this, since IMHO it depend how atomic is the net and how much well are written the codelets. In a world where programs are written fast and dirty, I'm very skeptical about this. – Marco Sulla Jun 22 '19 at 18:09
  • 1
    Yes, that's the ultimate promise of business rules engines with a graphical frontend. As long as the business rules are on the level of Excel spreadsheets, it could work ;-) – Roland Weber Jun 23 '19 at 05:18
  • You can build any kind of web application with Django. It's a general framework for anything that has wheels. CMS was just one example of what you can create on top of Django. – Roland Weber Jun 23 '19 at 05:19
  • I found this Django app, [Viewflow](http://viewflow.io/). Do you know it? if so, it's mature and feature-full as YAWL? – Marco Sulla Jun 23 '19 at 08:53