BPMN execution engine on Ethereum

Caterpillar is a Business Process Management System (BPMS) that runs on top of Ethereum and that relies on the translation of process models into smart contracts. More specifically, Caterpillar accepts as input a process model specified in BPMN and generates a set of smart contracts that captures the underlying behavior. The smart contracts, written in Ethereum's Solidity language, can then be compiled and deployed to the public or any other private Ethereum network using standard tools. Moreover, Caterpillar exhibits a REST API that can be used to interact with running instances of the deployed process models.

Caterpillar also provides a set of modelling tools and an execution panel which interact with the underlying execution engine via the aforementioned REST API. The latter can also be used by third party software to interact in a programmatic way via Caterpillar with the instances of business processes running on the blockchain.

Watch this video to see how Caterpillar works.

The running example used in the video can be found here.

The easiest way to try out Caterpillar is via Docker without the need to install all dependencies locally.

Open a terminal and run the comand:

 docker run --rm -it -p 3200:3200 -p 3000:3000 -p 8090:8090 jonaschn/caterpillar:v1

When the terminal displays the message "Listening on port 3000", it means that the core is running. Open a web browser to interact with the execution panel that will be running on http://localhost:3200/.

The execution panel provides a simple interface to interact with the core. The following options are available:

• Creating and uploading BPMN models by clicking the button with the corresponding name. From the modeler, when you press save, the request is sent to the core. The information about the creation, compilation, and deploy of the smart contracts will be displayed in the terminal where the Docker container is running. If the model was successfully compiled, then a link to display its information will appear on the dashboard with the format <model_identifier>:<model_name>.

• Searching and displaying all the process models created in the running container. The search will retrieve every model whose name or identifier contains the input as a substring. Empty searches will retrieve all created models.

• Displaying the Solidity code generated from the process model and creating new instances. From the dashboard, click the link to display the information of the desired process model. Here, there are accessible the Solidity code and the active instances. There are also provided two buttons that allow the creation and an update of running instances. The button labeled with "Refresh instances" will remove all addresses from the list where the belonging process execution was finished.

• Executing process instances. By clicking on the address of the desired instance, a viewer will be displayed that allows the visualization of the data objects' states and the active tasks (both in dark green) that can be executed by clicking on them. The viewer also allows switching to each active instance of the process. Every time a new instance is selected, the button labeled with "Go" must be pressed to display the current status of the instance.

All results of the queries performed by the execution panel via the caterpillar core REST API will appear also in the terminal where the docker container is running.

Caterpillar’s code distribution in this repository contains three different folders. The folder caterpillar_core includes the implementation of the core components, execution_panel includes the code of a BPMN visualizer that serves to keep track of the execution state of process instances and to lets users check in process data, and services_manager contains the implementation for an external service used for demonstration purposes.

For running Caterpillar locally, download the source code from the repository and follow the next steps to set up the applications and install the required dependencies.

npm install -g ethereumjs-testrpc gulp-cli

Execute the following commands if you have testrpc and gulp installed:

testrpc

cd v1.0/caterpillar-core/
npm install
gulp build
npm start

cd v1.0/services-manager/
npm install
gulp build
npm start

cd v1.0/execution-panel/
npm install
npm start

Open a web browser and enter the URL: http://localhost:4200/.

Try out the running example (used in the demo video) which can be found here.

The first requirement is to install testrpc which is a Node.js based Ethereum client for testing and development. It uses ethereumjs to simulate full client behavior and make developing Ethereum applications. All the instructions about the installation can be found here: https://github.com/ethereumjs/testrpc.

Please, be aware to start the testrpc server before running the applications Caterpillar Core and Services Manager. In that respect, you only need to open a terminal on your computer and run the command:

 testrpc

Open a terminal in your computer and move into the folder caterpillar_core.

For installing the dependencies, run the comands

 npm install
 gulp build

For running the application you use one of the following comands

 npm start     

If the process model has service tasks and consequently needs to interact with the services manager application, then you must run the services manager application and create the corresponding services before running Caterpillar core.

By default the application will runs on http://localhost:3000.

The application provides a REST API to interact with the core of Caterpillar. The following table summarizes the mapping of resource-related actions:

From the caterpillar_core folder is possible to run the script

 node demo_running_example_test.js

to register, create an instance and get the address of a sample process provided in the file demo_running_example.bpmn. For running the sample process it is also required to run first the application services_manager and to register the external services.

Open a terminal in your computer and move into the folder services_manager.

For installing the dependencies, run the comand

 npm install
 gulp build

For running the application use the comand

 npm start

By default the application will runs on http://localhost:3010.

The application provides a REST API to interact with services manager. The following table summarizes the mapping of resource-related actions:

From the services_manager folder is possible to run the script

 node oracle_creation.js

to register the services required by the running example provided in the core.

Open a terminal in your computer and move into the folder execution-panel.

For installing the dependencies, run the comand

 npm install

For running the application use the comand

 npm start

Open a web browser and put the URL http://localhost:4200/.

You must use the button refresh to update the instances running, and then select one of the URLs obtained that will contain the address when it is running the smart contract. Then press the button Open. Here, you can see the enabled activities visualized in dark green. For executing any enabled activity, just click on it and fill the parameter info if required. All the execution of the process (including internal operations) can be traced from the terminals of caterpillar_core and services_manager.