Two old friends ALF and BIRT

xProcess is an environment that covers a wide area since it is involved in all aspects of processes for projects. As a consequence it often overlaps or interacts with information that may be held in other tools or data sources. Its ability to integrate smoothly with information from elsewhere is a key to the products on-going success. There are 2 Eclipse initiatives that Ivis and the xProcess team are currently involved with, that will be bearing fruit in the product over the next few months. They are called ALF and BIRT.

ALF stands for the Application Lifecycle Framework. It's a Project is a subproject of the Eclipse Technology Project. Its purpose is to create a technology framework that will enable a diverse set of vendor tools, irrespective of architecture or platform, to exchange user data, manage business processes and collaborate in support the chosen ALM infrastructure technologies in use by development communities. After initial discussions with the ALF team (see Kevin Parker's Blog) we're expecting to be participating in the project and ensuring that xProcess is able to both generate ALF events and be called from ALF Service Flows. You can find out more about the ALF project from http://www.eclipse.org/alf/.

BIRT is an open source, Eclipse-based reporting system that produces compelling reports for both the web and printed formats. It provides core reporting features such as report layout, data access and scripting. It's integration with the next version xProcess means that it will be straightforward for customers to specific and generate their own documents and reports. BIRT's home page is at http://www.eclipse.org/birt/.

Both these projects will be represented at EclipseCon - an event where you'll also be able to meet the Ivis team of course, and see xProcess in action!