Re: [business-transaction] FAQ draft

[Doug Bunting <Doug.Bunting@Sun.COM>]

Bill,

This seems to be an improvement over the text currently visible [1] on 
our web site.  You have addressed my concern about question 5 and 
started the process for question 4.

I have embedded a few specific comments below.  These are mostly at a 
lower level than my earlier suggestions and questions.

thanx,
	doug

[1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/business-transaction/faq.php

On 10-Nov-03 10:13, William Z Pope wrote:

> Attached is an updated draft of the FAQ text.  It is missing the
> comparison statements on related work.
> 
> Regards,
> =bill
> 
> William Z Pope                            Bill.Pope@Choreology.com
> Choreology Ltd                          US Office: +1 603 373 0598
> Director of Product Management   London Office: +44 (0)8707 369686
>                                            Mobile: +1 603 502 4490
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 1.  What is the need for the BTP specification?
> 
>     Applications have changed from monolithic entities to composites constructs
Not sure what is meant here.  Did you mean "composite constructs of" or 
"composites constructed from"?

>     of distributed elements selected and called by an initiating component.
>     There is a class of these distributed, composite applications that require
>     more assurance and information about the outcome of the remote components
>     than is available in a simple request / response model.  BTP provides the
>     means to associate and coordinate the requests, responses, and outcomes
>     for distributed applications elements.
> 
>     At a most simple level BTP allows a set of remote calls to be grouped
>     together and the outcomes tied together.  It allows for
Probably needs a comma after "level" and slight rewording to avoid 
"remote calls".  I would suggest "autonomous elements" to tie this back 
to the previous paragraph.

>     - all or nothing outcome
>     - mixed outcome
>     - service alternative recognition and selection
>     - time qualification
>     - exception reporting
> 
> 2.  Who should be involved in this development?
> 
>     Transactional characteristics are a requirement for a set of internal
>     and external business interactions.  These interactions are not specific
>     to any application or infrastructure implementation.
> 
>     An enterprise that has or is planning to couple together application
>     elements on disparate systems or with disparate protocols should be
>     involved. 
> 
>     Infrastructure product vendors should be involved to ensure that the
>     needs of their customers are reflected in the specification.
> 
>     Application vendors interested in providing business process management
>     products or business process execution products should be involved.
> 
>     Organizations interested in ensuring the deployment of reliable,
>     manageable industry-specific business processes into loosely-coupled web
>     services environments.  
> 
>     Anyone with an interest in helping web services evolve from simple
>     messaging to long-lived, highly complex, cross enterprise collaborative
>     processes.
All of these enterprises and people should have been involved before. 
That is, this answer may no longer be relevant.  Who should be involved 
in the immediate work on the issues?

> 3. Who will benefit from this work and how?
> 
> 
>    Companies interested in automating and integrating their internal business
>    processes or those related to interactions with their partners.   Any
>    organization planning to deploy and support complex business processes
>    using web services. 
> 
>    To solve real-life business problems, companies may need to invoke multiple
>    web services applications inside their firewalls and across networks to
>    communicate with their customers, partners, and suppliers.   The BTP
>    specification allows sequencing and coordination of internal and external
>    web services to accomplish business tasks.
Again, this may be viewed as historical information.

> 4. How does this work compare with related efforts at other standards organizations?
> 
>    There are a number of industry efforts related to the Business
>    Transaction Protocol.  
>    - OASIS Web Services Composite Application Framework
>    - UN/CEFACT BPSS
I continue to have trouble understanding how this fits into the list. 
As I mentioned earlier:
	OASIS has announced a new TC to continue work on the BPSS
	specification.  The "UN/CEFACT" label may therefore not be
	appropriate anymore.

	I would also say that BPSS describes business collaborations
	but defers to other infrastructure such as BTP or WS-CAF at
	run time rather than saying one is more limited than the other.

How much of the business process description landscape do you want to 
cover in this list, if at all?  Would you want to include specifications 
from BPMI, WfMC, OASIS Web Services Business Process TC, W3C Web 
Services Choreography WG and whatever else?

>    - BEA/IBM/Microsoft ad hoc consortia Web Services Coordination, Web
>      Services Atomic Transaction, Web Services Transaction (Business
>      Activity). 
> 
>    <comparison text needed>    
> 
> 
> 5. When will this specification be completed?
> 
>    The Business Transaction Protocol 1.0 was promoted to OASIS Technical
>    Committee specification on 3rd June 2002.  Outstanding errata and
>    issues are to be addressed in 2003.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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