Re: AW: [wsbpel] Issue 136 - Proposal For Vote

["Yaron Y. Goland" <ygoland@bea.com>]

I think Paco raises a legitimate issue of prioritization. Who should 
BPEL worry more about surprising?

On one hand we have users of languages like Visual Basic, Perl, Python 
and JavaScript which all support the equivalent of static switch and 
if-then-elseif-else ala Issue 136.

On the other hand we have early BPEL adopters who knowingly adopted a 
brand new language that was under active standards development?
	
	Yaron

Frank Leymann wrote:
> +1
> 
> Gruss / Regards
> Frank Leymann
> 
> 
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Francisco Curbera [mailto:curbera@us.ibm.com]
> Gesendet: Freitag, 28. Januar 2005 20:26
> An: ygoland@bea.com
> Cc: wsbpeltc
> Betreff: Re: [wsbpel] Issue 136 - Proposal For Vote
> 
> The principle of least surprise works differently depending on who is going
> to be surprised. You are assuming that traditional programmers will be
> writing BPEL and will be puzzled that it does not work like C++; we're not
> so sure that is the people we need to worry about. On the other hand,
> renaming "switch" provides no new function and may "surprise" people
> already working with BPEL (users, implementers, etc).
> 
> So I would prefer to close w/o change.
> 
> Paco
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>                       "Yaron Y. Goland"
> 
>                       <ygoland@bea.com>        To:       wsbpeltc
> <wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org>                                        
>                                                cc:
> 
>                       01/28/2005 12:33         Subject:  [wsbpel] Issue 136
> - Proposal For Vote                                        
>                       PM
> 
>                       Please respond to
> 
>                       ygoland
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Issue 136 – If-Then-Else Support
> 
> Proposal: Rename the elements in switch to make them into an
> if-then-elseif-else structure.
> 
> Rationale: BPEL's switch is identical in functionality to what other
> languages use if-then-elseif-else for. To make matters more confusing
> other languages do include a control structure called 'switch' but in
> the majority of languages that 'switch' doesn't work anything like
> BPEL's switch does.
>              Following the principle of least surprise it would be best if
> BPEL's
> flow control structures followed the same naming styles as used by just
> about every other major language.
> 
> Changes Required: Replace "switch" with "if", "case" with "elseif",
> "otherwise" with "else" and add in a "then" and condition element to the
> switch activity. This is a purely syntactic change.
> 
> <if standard-attributes>
>     standard-elements
>     <condition expressionLanguage="anyURI"?>
>        ... bool-expr ...
>     </condition>
>     <then>activity</then>
>     <elseif> *
>        <condition expressionLanguage="anyURI"?>
>           ... bool-expr ...
>        </condition>
>        activity
>     </elseif>
>     <else>?
>        activity
>     </else>
> </if>
> 
> Note: Good ideas stolen from Maciej, bad ones I invented myself.
> 
> 
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> 
> 
>