VOSibilities

In a recent post, David Linthicum asks if BPEL is irrelevant. And just as David predicts BPEL providers would do, we fundamentally disagree with the premise. In fact, we don’t see how you could create an SOA without BPEL.

As I read the post it seems he has two sets objections. First, a lack of integration of people into processes and second, a collection of concerns about recovery and exception handling.

ActiveVOS is the first development system that’s based on BPEL 2.0 with no proprietary extensions and to include BPEL4People. As a result, it’s the only 100% standards-based way to achieve long-running orchestrations that include human tasks as first-class participants in the orchestrations.

And if you want recovery and error handling, how’s this: what if you could, in a running orchestration, dynamically switch endpoints when the primary wasn’t available? What if you could change what a running orchestration does based on the current state of the overall business process? IOW, if you could determine that processes that included human tasks had problems with the quality of the work and as a result you could dynamically change what happens to in-flight orchestrations? What if you could, very simply, suspend a failed transaction — one that might have been running for weeks or even months — so that corrective action could be taken? What if you could easily version processes so that in-flight orchestrations could conclude before a new process is implemented?

These are just some of the things that ActiveVOS does that we believe are part and parcel of creating applications in a services-based environment and for which there are no real substitutes. BPMN ain’t gonna do all this (it’s not even executable). AJAX and most Web 2.0 technologies are primarily front-of-screen and do nothing to manage the amazing complexities of long-running orchestrations made up of heterogeneous services.

David, don’t pull that trigger until you talk with us. We’re happy to show you (and anyone else) all this and more, anytime, anywhere. I think you’ll come away with a completely different perception.

Tags: BPEL, SOA

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 3:16 pm and is filed under BPEL, SOA, VOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.