I am new to automation for Windows apps, apart from using basic Sikuli.
I checked some options like PyAutoGUI, PyWinAuto. Which is the best tool for automation of a 3rd party Windows application out of Sikuli, PyAutoGUI, PyWinAuto or any other tool?
Preferable - a cross platform tool (Mac and Windows)
If you need text properties based automation, pywinauto should help you. But there is no popular text-based cross-platform tool in Open Source field.
On macOs pyatom/ATOMac is good enough if you prefer Python (it requires some compilation during setup, but works well).
This is the big list of open source tools I'm maintaining.
PyAutoGUI has image recognition capabilities (like Sikuli or Lackey) but it's not text based (even no Win32 API support).
PyAutoIt bindings and AutoIt itself doesn't support MS UI Automation technology (only Win32 API).
The Getting Started Guide for pywinauto explains some differences between these 2 technologies and how to switch between them in pywinauto.
Anyway this field is complicated and you may face many challenges. Feel free to ask more detailed questions because this question is more suitable for
Software Recommendations StackExchange site.
I have some programs (.prg) that operate using .dbf files, as i am migrating to postgresql (personal preferences) i really would like to know if there are ways to "translate" commands from one language to another.
Translating to python would be another possibility
Thank you
There isn't. Visual FoxPro the language is fairly tightly tied into its own object model, and when you start bringing UI elements into the equation the time and work involved in automatic migration means that it's always quicker to re-implement on the new platform.
If you're interested in Python you could take a look at Dabo. This is a Python framework aimed at desktop and web apps, but developed by some long-time Visual FoxPro experts. In that respect it is conceptually similar to Visual FoxPro in a lot of ways.
Dabo's authors, Ed Leafe and Paul McNett, have strong backgrounds in
database application development using the awesome and underrated
Microsoft Visual FoxPro development environment.
While Visual FoxPro shines at developing data-centric applications, it
has one limitation that cannot be ignored: it only runs on Microsoft
Windows, and Ed and Paul both have clients that want their
applications to run on Linux and Macintosh. We are sure we are not
alone in this regard: it is a multi-platform world with more diverse
needs than one vendor can fulfill.
Ed and Paul got to talking one day: Paul had been researching various
multiplatform GUI toolkits for about 18 months, and Ed has lots of
experience developing the Visual FoxPro Codebook framework. We decided
to work together to make a framework for developing robust
data-centric applications for multi-platform deployment. We've come up
with a design that is simple, flexible, and robust, and we've begun
developing our own client applications using the Dabo framework.
I'm doing a comparison among all existing BPMN 2.0 Process Engines e.g. Activiti, jBPM etc.
I've prepared a list of 4 process engines which executes BPMN 2.0 given below;
Popular BPMN 2.0 compliant open-source engines:
Activiti: http://www.activiti.org/
jBPM: http://www.jboss.org/jbpm
Bonita: http://www.bonitasoft.com/
A commercial engine:
ActiveVOS: http://www.activevos.com/products
I would appreciate your help if you enhance my research by adding any existing Process Engines (for BPMN 2.0) in the above list along with the quick comparison among all.
I would prefer a very short comparison listing only important features (distinguishing features like what is possible for one and not for others, licensing, dependencies with other products like tomcat & JBoss and operating systems etc)
P.S: I've found much on Activiti vs jBPM but still your answers will be a favor.
I cannot offer you a full-fledged comparison but I can give you some pointers that might help you in your evaluation:
An "Activiti in Action" book has just been published (July
2012) and in it you will have a section reviewing other BPMN process
engines (Section 1.2.3 - Knowing the competitors).
For Activiti, there also exists since recently, a commercially-supported version called camunda fox BPM Platform. They also provide a comparison with the added-value they provide here.
I am disappointed with Activiti. It should be called Spring BPM because it doesn't work well without it. If you don't mind using Spring, then Activiti might be a better fit. If you are using JEE/CDI, then JBPM is a better fit.
I did such a research, too. Here are the key-points which were relevant for our concrete use case:
Bonita:
Bonita has a zero-coding approach which means that they provide an easy to use IDE to build your processes without the need for coding. To achieve that, Bonita has the concept of connectors. For example, if you want to consume a web service, they provide you with a graphical wizzard. The downside is that you have to write the plain XML SOAP-envelope manually and copy it in a graphical textbox. The problem with this approach is that you only can realize use cases which are intended by Bonita. If you want to integrate a system which Bonita did not developed a connector for, you have to code such a connector on your own which is very painful. For example, Bonita offers a SOAP connector for consuming SOAP web services. This connector only works with SOAP 1.2, but not for SOAP 1.1 (http://community.bonitasoft.com/answers/consume-soap-11-webservices-bonita-secure-web-service-connector). If you have a legacy application with SOAP 1.1, you cannot integrate this system easily in your process. The same is true for databases. There are only a few database connectors for dedicated database versions. If you have a version not matching to a connector, you have to code this on your own.
In addition, Bonita has no support for LDAP or Active Directory Sync in the free community edition which is quite a showstopper for a production environment. Another thing to consider is that Bonita is licensed under the GPL / LGPL license which could cause problems when you want to integrate Bonita in another enterprise application. In addition, the community support is very weak. There are several posts which are more than 2 years old and those posts are still not answered.
Another important thing is Business-IT-Alignment. Modelling processes is a collaborative discipline in which IT AND the business analysts are involed. That is why you need adequate tools for both user groups (e.g. an Eclipse Plugin for the developers and an easy to use web modeler for the business people). Bonita only offers Bonita Studio, which needs to be installed on your machine. This IDE is quite technical and not suitable for business users. Therefore, it is very hard to realize Business-IT-Alignment with Bonita.
Bonita is a BPM tool for very trivial and easy processes. Because of the zero-coding approach, the lerning curve is very low and you can start modelling very fast. You need less programming skills and you are able to realize your processes without the need of coding. But as soon as your processes become very complex, Bonita might not be the best solution because of the lack of flexibility. You only can realize use cases which are intended by Bonita.
jBPM:
jBPM is a very powerful Open Source BPM Engine which has a lot of features. The web modeler even supports prefabricated models of some van der Aalst workflow patterns (workflowpatterns.com). Business-IT-Alignment is realizable because jBPM offers an Eclipse integration as well as a web-based modeler. A bit tricky is that you only can define forms in the web modeler, but not in the Eclipse Plugin, as far as I know. To sum up, jBPM is a good candidate for using in a company. Our showstopper was the scalability. jBPM is based on the Rules-Engine Drools. This leads to the fact that whole process instances are persisted as BLOBS in the database. This is a critial showstopper when you consider searching and scalability.
In addition, the learning curve is very high because of the complexity. jBPM does not offer a Service Task like the BPMN-Standard suggests In contrast, you have to define your own Java Service tasks and you have to register them manually in the engine, which results in quite low level programming.
Activiti:
In the end, we went with Activiti because this is a very easy to use framework-based engine. It offers an Eclipse Plugin as well as a modern AngularJS Web-Modeler. In this way, you can realize Business-IT-Alignment. The REST-API is secured by Spring Security which means that you can extend the Engine very easily with Single Sign-on features. Because of the Apache License 2.0, there is no copyleft which means you are completely free in terms of usage and extensibility which is very important in a productive environment.
In addition, the BPMN-coverage is very good. Not all BPMN-elements are realized, but I do not know any engine which does that.
The Activiti Explorer is a demo frontend which demonstrates the usage of the Activiti APIs. Since this frontend is based on VAADIN, it can be extended very easily. The community is very active which means that you can get help very fast if you have any problems.
Activiti offers good integration points for external form-technologies which is very important for a productive usage. The form-technologies of all candidates are very restrictive. Therefore, it makes sense to use a standard form-technology like XForms in combination with the Engine. Even such more complex things are realizable via the formKey-Attribute.
Activiti does not follow the zero-coding approach which means that you will need a bit of coding if you want to orchestrate services. But even the communication with SOAP services can be achieved by using a Java Service Task and Apache CXF. The coding effort is low.
I hope that my key points can help by taking a decision. To be clear, this is no advertisment for Activiti. The right product choice depends on the concrete use cases. I only want to point out the most important points in our project.
Best regards Ben
Nommy, you should take a look at Roubroo - a process engine built to natively support BPMN 2.0. It does not have the legacy of an older process engine being retrofitted to support the new standard. It support BPMN 2.0 execution semantics including the IOR gateway, which I think is the key to way business processes are defined in a networked graph. jBPM and Activiti are based on the underlying PVM, which has great support for some workflow patterns but not for others. Take a look at this research paper : http://eprints.qut.edu.au/14320/1/14320.pdf
and http://www.workflowpatterns.com/evaluations/opensource/
In my opinion currently Camunda BPM Platform the leader in the open source field.
And you mentioned Open Source?
So try camunda if you like:
- Clean BPMN focused engine (Shared, Embedable or "remote")
- Clean and working REST API
- Out of the box Platform with basic administration tools, and development ready API's
- Biggest open-source community (my persnoal oppinion)
- Best of Breed approach in the java eco-system.
- If you like Java.
- If you want to that your Processes get accepted by your IT crowd.
http://www.camunda.com/fox/product/details/
jBPM5 is agnostic to the environment, it doesn't depend on JBoss, you can run it in every Application Server, Servlet Container or a SE environment. jBPM5 is licensed with the Apache Software License V2 which I believe that is a really good idea.
You can of course find more information in the official page.
Cheers
Regarding jBPM:
jBPM is an open-source workflow engine written in Java that can execute business processes described in BPMN 2.0 (or its own process definition language jPDL in earlier versions). It is released under the ASL (or LGPL in earlier versions) by the JBoss company
It includes,
Strong and powerful integration with business rules and event processing.
Process collaboration, monitoring and management through the Guvnor repository and the management consoles.
Human interaction using an independent WS-HT human task service.
In essence jBPM takes graphical process descriptions as input. A process is composed of tasks that are connected with sequence flows. Processes represent an execution flow. The graphical diagram (flow chart) of a process is used as the basis for the communication between non-technical users and developers.
Take also a look at Imixs-Workflow which is a human-centric workflow engine. Unlike the usual engines, Imixs workflow is characterised by strong support for user-centric.
Human-centric business process management means supporting human skills, activities and collaboration in a task-oriented manner. With such a Workflow engine you can protect and securely distribute business data within an event-driven BPM architecture based on the BPMN 2.0 standard.
The Imixs-Workflow engine is open source and can be integrated in Jakarta EE oder deployed out of the box with a Microservice running in a Docker container
Take a look at Zeebe.io - a modern, cloud-native workflow engine with first-class Node.js support.
I'm looking for a client side (that is: HTML5, Javascript, Flash or Silvelight) library, which is
capable of creating interactive charts
capable of exporting these charts into jpg/png
is free (LGPL, or similar)
I have looked into Highcharts, and FusionCharts; both are very good choices - except that these can not be used in commercial software.
Are there any charting libraries with the above mentioned conditions?
Thanks,
krisy
FusionCharts provides a product named FusionCharts Free.
FusionCharts Free is dual licensed under the MIT (X11) and GNU GPL licenses.
In a nutshell, the above licenses allow you to:
Use the software for any purpose, commercial or personal
Modify the software's source code to suit your needs
Share the software with your friends and neighbors
Re-distribute the software as part of your software or hardware
applications
Read more about the licensing part here - http://www.fusioncharts.com/goodies/fusioncharts-free/product-licensing/
We had a rather nice lecture about Model driven architecture by a guy from Model Labs.
One thing that got me intrigued was the version control for models ( not to be confused with different models of version control) - or the lack of thereof. By version control for models he meant a way to version XML, EMF files which preserves their semantic.
So, I'm interested in what has been done so far on that field (he mentioned something about SVN and Moodle, though I could have misheard him). The Google search yielded nothing so I'm turning to the wisdom of the Stack Overflow.
I'm looking mostly for information in the form of books, articles, links.
I don't know of a VCS alone dedicated to Model, because Model-base design is often part of a all chain of documents that need to be kept in sync.
Namely (not an exhaustive list):
requirements documents (from which you start modeling)
source code and documentations (generated and implemented from the model)
Plus, I never saw the GUI aspect fully solved in those tools (one model painstakingly organized a certain way might be versioned without layout information, and restored organized another way).
One tool I know of which covers all of those development processes is Modelio, which includes a "teamwork manager"
Another example (which I don't know as much about) would be metaCASE, which has an interesting paper "The Model Repository: More than just XML under version control", about DSM (Domain-Specific Modeling).
DSM: model-based software development approach that uses visual models as primary artifacts in the development process.
DSM raises the level of abstraction beyond normal programming languages by directly specifying the solution in a language that uses concepts and rules from the problem domain – a Domain-Specific Language (DSL).
It does summarize the problem:
There is increased awareness within the modeling arena of the need for
a central repository of system description information.
This is brought on by a growing recognition that only with a strong central repository can modeling tools be integrated, cope with large projects, provide full life-cycle support, produce complete documentation, perform system-wide validation and verification, and adequately control a project.
A full list of version control tools for models can be found here: http://modeling-languages.com/content/version-control-tools-modeling-artifacts
Check EMF framework Edapt
it provides the following features:
Edapt IDE Tooling:
Ecore Editor enhancement to create and maintain the history of an Ecore
Operation-browser to execute refactorings on an Ecore
Release Tooling to prepare a migration plugin from the Ecore history
Custom Migration Support
Edapt Runtime:
API to detect version of given model instances
API to migrate model instances with registered migration plugins