Alternatives to Spring State Machine [closed]

Question

I have used Spring state machine with some basic Spring MVC application. I have to admit, it is pretty easy to configure and use.

But it has many limitations as well, mainly because of it being in very early stages of development.

I also came across some workflow engines like Activiti which is an open-source workflow engine written in Java and stateless4j which is a Lightweight Java State Machine. They look much more polished and sophisticated.

I wanted to know what is the difference between these and Spring State Machine (Advantages or disadvantages).

Syzran

Don't no much about Spring State Machine but Activiti is really good tool for workflow modeling, you can try activiti Explorer (Web APP) to know more about it's features. – Conal

Activiti is a workflow engine so it's kinda different beast. If you say that stateless4j is more sophisticated, could you give an example what it can do what spring statemachine cannot do? – Resting

sorry @JanneValkealahti I was talking about Activiti .. where do we use Workflow Engine and where do we use simple state machines then ? – Syzran

Not really required but most likely a state machine is a building block for a workflow engine. It really is an application which have a lot of bells and whistles(integration components) around its own workflow states and business processes. Think en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workflow_engine explains it rather well. – Resting

@JanneValkealahti Thanks :) – Syzran

It depresses me that this obviously off topic question has 4 up votes. – Tibetoburman

Answer 1

I would say so a Workflow Engine is a subset of State Machine. With a State Machine you can do much more things and you can think a Workflow Engine like a library for a State Machine, with use cases that are pre-configured but when you want something out of ordinary then you have to make your hands dirty again with a State Machine.

Rainie