HumanTask Comittee draft 1.1

[Yoichi Takayama <yoichi@melcoe.mq.edu.au>]

Hi

The WS-HumanTask specification 1.0 and 1.1 (draft) both are not clear  
on how the Task Application (a local or remote Service) can pass  the  
Task human interface back to the Task Parent Application (Process  
host) via the service interface connection they both establish.

Different from the human free BPEL Process, which sends and receives  
data, the Human Task service must pass back the Task human interface  
for human to complete the Task on the system which is hosting the  
Process. (This is not the case for a remote service which is executed  
on the service side by humans).

Judging from the document, this must occur between the Steps 3 and 4a  
(or 4b) of the Figure 1 in Section 7.

It simply says:

1975	Now the instance of the human task is activated, so the assigned  
person can perform the task
1976	(e.g. the risk assessment). Once the human task was successfully  
completed, a response
1977	message is passed back to the parent application (step (4a) in  
Figure 1).

I think that this description is too simple. You may need to expand  
more to include precise mechanism used in that part.

In other parts of the document, it says that the human interface of a  
Task could be e.g. Web Application, Flex client, .Net client (Windows  
remote application), Forms client, Portlet client, Email clients.  
Although in one part it says that it assumes a simple one-page form in  
most cases, handling all these types of UIs is not that simple.

When the information about the human interfaces (e.g. UI definition in  
XML form, URL of an Web Application, or RPC call definition, etc.) is  
passed back to the Task Parent Application (Task Engine, I presume), I  
presume that you expect it to come inside some standardized SOAP  
message, which indicates to the Task Parent application what is  
returned and how the Task instance should be "activated" (cf. line  
1975).

Then, the Task Engine may be able to handle it properly and pass it  
onto an appropriate Task Client. A Task client may simply render UI or  
it may have to connect with its own protocol to the service as a  
server, such as Flex Communication Protocol via the Web Service  
interface (i.e. HTTP/SOAP tunneled) or on some other port without  
HTTP /SOAP tunneling.

Or, is such a thing a part of the WS-Coordination standard (which is  
not explained explicitly in the document) and am I missing something  
here?

Thanks,
Yoichi

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Yoichi Takayama, PhD
Senior Research Fellow
RAMP Project
MELCOE (Macquarie E-Learning Centre of Excellence)
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY

Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 9073
Fax: +61 (0)2 9850 6527
www.mq.edu.au
www.melcoe.mq.edu.au/projects/RAMP/
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