Re: [wsbpel] Issue - 53 - Should include Business Transaction Management (BTM) programming constructs compatible with WS-T, BTP and WS-TXM]

[David RR Webber - XML ebusiness <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Mark,

+1 on all of this!

Thanks, DW

Message text written by "Mark Little"
> 
> Mark,
>
> I think that is too narrow a view.
>
> As a short term band-aid - just tracking the BPEL context will
> work - same as WS-CAF is doing too.   And that is fine if that
> is all you care about.

Sorry, but WS-CAF doesn't do this (more precisely, the WS-Context
specification doesn't do what you are suggesting, or rather what I was
suggesting as an initial approach for BPEL): it allows the tracking of
contexts of arbitrary complexity. However, I'm not sure this is the
appropriate forum to discuss that (though if people want to open this up,
we
could).

>
> However - for eBusiness orchestration you have to know the
> complete ebusiness context - because that can effect your
> execution path downstream or upstream from where you are
> at that instant.

What's your definition of the complete context? I wasn't actually imposing
any restrictions on what could be in this BPEL context element -
essentially
anything that is needed for the BPEL process to run. However, what I was
suggesting was that defining a general context structure (that could, for
example, be used to carry a security context, a transaction context, ...)
and then showing how it could also carry a BPEL context, is out of scope.
Other specifications/standards efforts (like BCM, for example) may do this,
so why re-invent the wheel or step on their toes?

>
> That's why the BCM Choice Point approach is providing that
> ability to do more than just a "thread ID" and status style
> approach.

For some b2b interactions just being able to correlate is sufficient. For
others it isn't, as you mention.

>
> Anyway - you can either resolve this with a short-term BPEL
> only technique - or you can look beyond that to the bigger
> picture.

I don't think anyone can say what the bigger picture is going to look like
at the moment, unfortunately. IMO if we are going to tackle this issue at
all in this TC then we should look at what's needed for BPEL in terms of a
context "element" (or whatever you want to call it). Then implementers can
worry about how it's conveyed.

Mark.
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