Bonita 2023.2 is here!
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We’re proud to announce Bonita 2023.2, our second Bonita platform release of this year! This new major release represents a big milestone on our new paradigm, called Self-Contained Applications, that will simplify the build, package, run, and update of your Bonita applications using existing standards! This release also brings the necessary tools to help you keep track of your tests and to offer a transparent experience to your users even during maintenance.
Are you ready to discover Bonita 2023.2? Let’s go!
➡️Use existing standards to build your Self-Contained Apps
➡️Inform your users about ongoing maintenance
➡️ Ensure service continuity thanks to a new user sharing session mechanism between nodes *
➡️ Keep track of the scope of your tests and identify errors with the Bonita Test Toolkit *
➡️Supervise and administer all your applications in Bonita Central*
* Available only for Enterprise Edition
Use existing standards to build your Self-Contained Apps
As you may recall, earlier this year we launched an experimental tool to build the first Self-Contained Applications. This first milestone helped us to demonstrate the value of independently packaging business applications developed with Bonita. With this release, we have gone further! We are aligning to the existing build standards to make any integration to your CI/CD pipelines easier. No need to download an extra tool anymore, it is now as simple as a Maven command line.
Creating a self-contained application with a Docker image using Maven
How does it work?
A Bonita project is now a full Maven multi-module project, which means that every component contained inside, such as the app, the BDM (Business Data Model), and the extensions, are Maven submodules. As a result, with our in-house Maven plugin, submodules can be built as specific artifacts while staying linked to the project itself thanks to the Project ID and the Project Version. Now you have a high-priority reason to apply best practices regarding versioning on your project - to avoid problems during updates.
We use Maven profiles to package your Self-Contained App with a Tomcat bundle or a Docker image, as you choose. It is also possible to configure several build options, such as the environment, the artifacts to include or exclude from your build, and the Docker image to be used.
The needed dependencies are automatically fetched from Docker Hub and Maven Central for projects created with Bonita Community Edition, and from the Bonita Artifact Repository for projects created with Bonita Enterprise Edition.
Furthermore, with this new approach we target more modularity and flexibility for your applications. Now you can easily choose directly from the Bonita Marketplace in Bonita Studio which default Bonita application to add inside your Self-Contained Application as an extension. Do you also need the Bonita User Application, or the Bonita Administrator Application or the Bonita Reporting Application? Or none of them? It’s up to you to decide!
Applications available on Bonita Marketplace
You get more flexibility for your automations!
More information: https://documentation.bonitasoft.com/bonita/2023.2/build-run/build-application#_maven_build
Inform your users about ongoing maintenance
We are introducing a new “Maintenance Mode” that helps you handle service interruptions due to updates or maintenance operations in your applications.
During this mode:
- A modal dialog is displayed on your pages to inform your users and to redirect them to a 503 error page: “Platform under maintenance”.
- Your users can choose to remain on the current page if they want to avoid losing unsubmitted content.
- Bonita REST API calls respond with a 503 error code.
- Active user sessions are preserved.
The configuration and activation/deactivation of this mode is available through the Bonita Super Administrator Application. It is possible to schedule maintenance and set a message to inform users about the service interruption. The “Platform under maintenance” page, like any other page contained by default in Bonita, can be customized using the Bonita UI Designer. To make the modal dialog appear on your pages, simply migrate your application to Bonita version 2023.2.
Of course, if you would like to avoid service interruptions, keep reading to know how to ensure service continuity thanks to our user sharing session mechanism between nodes.
Ensure service continuity thanks to a new user sharing session mechanism between nodes (Enterprise Edition only)
We know that experiencing downtimes can be a key factor for your users' satisfaction. With this new capability - available in our Enterprise Edition - we target to ensure access to your applications without interruptions.
How? On Bonita clusters, the HTTP sessions are now shared between all the nodes of that cluster by default, and the load balancer will automatically dispatch the requests between them. If a node becomes unavailable, and a user’s request to this node fails, the user won’t need to log back in again as his session will remain active and their request will be automatically dispatched to another node. Your users won’t even notice the node downtime! They will remain seamlessly connected and will be able continue working without interruption.
To know more: https://documentation.bonitasoft.com/bonita/2023.2/runtime/overview-of-bonita-bpm-in-a-cluster
Keep track of the scope of your tests and identify errors with the Bonita Test Toolkit (Enterprise Edition only)
This new version of our existing library Bonita Test Toolkit offers the capability to generate a visual report of your integration tests. At a glance, you will be able to know which paths of your BPMN diagram were taken during the tests, so you can keep track of the scope of those tests and align with business requirements.
The Bonita Test Toolkit is available from the Bonita Artifact Repository as a standard Maven dependency. Use your favorite IDE to write your integration tests and validate the correct execution of your process. Our library allows you to start and execute cases, and make assertions at any time on the state of the platform, the data, the candidates for a task, and much more! With a simple command line, you will be able to run your tests and generate an HTML file with all the results including BPMN diagrams, execution counters and execution paths.
A key step towards a successful completion of your projects!
Generated test report using Bonita Test Toolkit
Supervise and administer all your applications in Bonita Central (Enterprise Edition only)
Bonita Central offers a centralized place for configuration, health checking, and supervision of your applications! Bonita Central is itself a Self-Contained Application that is capable of connecting to your running applications - more specifically to their runtimes - to:
- Follow up their health status
- Live-monitor technical indicators
- Keep an eye on all the nodes in a cluster
- Visualize and download the current configurations of the runtimes
- Easily identify common patterns and mistakes in your environments
For a step-by-step demo on how to use Bonita Central, take a look at the replay of stop #9 of the Bonita Express. It’s all about Self-Contained Apps and Bonita Central.
To know more: https://documentation.bonitasoft.com/central/latest/overview
Bonita 2023.2: A Major Release
Good to know: as this is a major release, we are moving to technical version 9.0.0. This means that some major changes have been done including:
- removal of already-deprecated API resources, custom extensions, and Groovy classes
- deprecation of a list of existing API resources
- renaming of a few runtime configuration properties
To see the detailed list, see the Release Notes.
Ready for Bonita 2023.2?
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