Glossary for WSBPEL??

["Fletcher, Tony" <Tony.Fletcher@choreology.com>]

Title: Message

Dear Colleagues,

 

On the use case sub-group teleconference yesterday we stumbled across the issue of the need to define certain terms for our use.

 

Our desire in the use case group would be to use terms generally recognised in business in the Use Case document - rather than BPEL specific terms.  Unfortunately our suspicion is that this may depend on which person you ask and which industry they are in.

 

We therefore felt it necessary to specify certain terms so that we can use that language in the Use Case document, and attempt to use it consistently.  We noted that terms are used in the current 1.1 specification and specified in line explicitly or implicitly, but there is no Glossary / Definition of Key Terms chapter or Appendix.  We feel that such should exist and be maintained at the group level so that we all try to use terms consistently in our work, whether as part of the main group or any of the sub-groups.

 

I was actioned to make you all aware of this.  The Use Case sub-group is willing to initiate work on a Glossary / Definition of Key Terms  and leave it to the chairs / the main group to decide how and when to transition the work into the main group.

 

Please send suggestions for business terms, and their definitions, that we do already use or you think we may need to use in any of our documents to myself ( tony.fletcher@choreology.com ) and Monica Martin (Monica.Martin@Sun.COM)

 

Please reply directly to this message if for some reason you think that this is not a good idea.

 

Some terms can be defined so that they overlap with others and part of the work overall will be to agree the set of terms that we will use while recognising others as synonyms or very similar terms (for instance 'party' and 'partner' ?).

 

The sort of terms that we were thinking of include (note these are examples generated by Tony for the purpose of this message - they are not the considered opinion of the use case group):

 

Party, Partner, Role, Transaction, Business Process, executable process, abstract process, enterprise, business protocol, cancel (cancellation), confirm (confirmation), compensate (compensation). activity, and many others.

 

We only need to define terms that we use in one, or more, of our documents, and where the common usage of the term is not sufficiently well known, or inadequate or not quite what we mean.

 

Other groups have also embarked on a similar exercise (e.g. UN/CEFACT and W3C WS-Choreography).  Could we / should we  make use of their terms and definitions (for saves effort and re-invention, against copyright problems).

 

Does anyone know of a publicly and readily available 'dictionary' of business terminology or any thing like that, that we could reference and make use of (and thus only need to have our own definition when the given one does not fit for our purpose.

 

I think it would be wise for the use case group to now await initial responses before going any further - maybe take up this work in earnest after the face to face meeting - if it is still deemed appropriate.

 

Best Regards,

Tony                          

	Tony Fletcher Technical Advisor Choreology Ltd. 68, Lombard Street, London EC3V 9L J   UK
	Phone:	+44 (0) 870 7390076
	Mobile:	+44 (0) 7801 948219
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