RE: [wsbpel] Gotos Considered Harmful?

["Eckenfels. Bernd" <B.Eckenfels@seeburger.de>]

Hello Ron,

in my experience a BP modeller does not wants to draw a business process with simple cyclic graphs. 

Most analysts (including customers who actually model their process specs themself) are well aware of the issues which may result in those kind of graphs (especially monitoring, receconditions, indeterministics, ...). 

Additionally, I think the use of a loop container (while, ...) is pretty intuitive, it even allows nice graphical represenations: "everything inside this square can be repeated until...".

so first of all: I think support of loops by (only) block structures is not an issue for an modeller, and I agree with you, even if it is a valid requirement, it is totally against the primary BPEL goals. Besides, with current BPELs link semantic, i can not think of any alternative to allow cyclic process execution, anyway.

Greetings
Bernd

PS: an unrelated side note: UMM has something called the "technical modeller" role, which is different from the busines domain expert and different from the busines process analyst. I think this distinction is important. BPM tools should only be used by persons who are able to fit the "technical designer" role. See 2.1.3 in UMM-N090 R10: http://webster.disa.org/cefact-groups/tmg/doc_bpwg.html



-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Ten-Hove [mailto:Ronald.Ten-Hove@Sun.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 6:55 PM
To: Jim Webber
Cc: wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [wsbpel] Gotos Considered Harmful?


    I afraid we may be reasoning by anology here. Cycles in a process 
graph may "smell" like gotos to those of  us steeped in the lore of 
 software engineering, but to a business analyst they are a natural, 
necessary construct. They describe how real business processes work.

    Trying to impose "fashionable" structured software concepts on 
another domain sounds like a  questionable exercise, if the objective is 
to model the business process at a high level. If this is not the 
intent, then let us by all means attempt to structure BPEL processes 
according to good software engineering practices, including being wary 
of unstructured constructs.

-Ron

P.S. Does anybody remember computed GOTOs in Fortran IV? If gotos are 
considered to be harmful, then the computed goto must be life-threatening!

Jim Webber wrote:

>After hearing the arguments against Gotos on today's telcon, I have to
>(unfashionably) suggest that they're not so bad. See:
>http://www.ppig.org/papers/12th-marshall.pdf for a short argument in favour
>of not ignoring Gotos. 
>
>Note it isn't BPEL-specific, but makes the general point that there are some
>places where a Goto is the right thing to use (though those situations are
>few and far between).
>
>Jim
>
>
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