OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

wsbpel message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]


Subject: Re: [wsbpel] Gotos Considered Harmful?


+1

Frank Leymann wrote:

>I absolutely agree with the existence of (at least) two different roles in
>specifying business processes: A business analyst and a "technical
>modeller".  Typically what happens is that the technical modeller adds the
>technical details to the business analyst's results that the analyst
>doesn't care about (complex data structures, transforming textual
>conditions into Boolean conditions, adding assignments etc etc).
>
>But, please, let me emphasize again that the technical modeller should not
>(!) redraw/reshape/... the business analyst's process model, but "simply"
>extend it.  Reshaping the model will mostly result in semantic clashes - on
>other words, if the business analyst and the technical modeller do not
>share the same understanding about the behavior of the model ("operational
>semantics") they do very likely mis-communicate, or the semantics of "the"
>representation of the business process will change. This is unacceptable
>for various reasons.
>
>Thus, the language that the business analyst uses has to be a "subset" of
>the language that the technical modeller uses.  The usage of quotes need to
>be refined:  There are elements in the analyst's language that are to be
>transformed by the technical modeller (textual conditions into Boolean
>conditions, for example); and the analyst's language does include elements
>that are not of interest to the technical modeller at all (e.g. artifacts
>needed for simulation like cost information etc.).
>
>I am fully aware that there are zillions of metamodels and corresponding
>tools around that do target business analysts, and that these metamodels
>are only partially (if at all) complying with the ideal sketched before!
>The relevant artifacts captured by these BPR tools will have to be mapped
>onto BPEL resulting in a "BPEL skelleton", and this case the technical
>modeller will have to reshape the skelleton into valid BPEL. This is done
>today by mapping from BPR tool representation to workflow/process-engine
>vendor specific "technical formats"; and it is a real pain for the
>customers if the tools metamodel and the workflow/process-engine metamodel
>are not close. To cure this pain, a couple of tools already provide "modes"
>that restrict the modeling capabilities provided by the original tool's
>metamodel to the ones of the target workflow-system or process engine
>avoiding the need for "redraw", "reshape" etc..
>
>Regards,
>Frank
>
>-------------------
>Prof. Dr. Frank Leymann, Distinguished Engineer
>IBM Software Group
>Member, IBM Academy of Technology
>
>Phone 1:  +49-7031-16 39 98
>Phone 2:  +49-7056-96 50 67
>Mobile:  +49-172-731 5858
>-----------------
>  
>




[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]