VOSibilities

For this episode of our podcast, I am very pleased to bring you a video recording made by our own Kim Pease in which she demonstrates ActiveVOS’s capabilities to interact with JMS queues. Kim gives a great overview of what you can do with ActiveVOS, but even more than that, the features she demonstrates make a very subtle but important point: orchestration developers don’t live in a 100% SOAP world.

Many of the services developers need to orchestrate are available via JMS and originate and terminate in common systems like MQ Series and JBoss. We believe it’s very important to be inclusive of these transports and to make sure they are able to participate in a first-class way with SOAP-transported services. In short, being “doctrinaire” about how services should communicate with the orchestration system only serves to impede developers who deal with heterogeneous systems as a daily matter of course. A good example of this pragmatism in ActiveVOS is at about 6:00 into the demo when Kim shows how ActiveVOS will automatically detect an incoming message’s format and reply in kind.

I want to thank you all for the feedback we’ve been receiving about this podcast series. We will continue to post a wide variety of content: demo vignettes (help me persuade Kim and our other engineers to burn the midnight oil to create more by downloading and viewing this episode like crazy), product information, audio podcasts and PDF content. Be sure to subscribe to this feed at http://www.vosibilities.com/category/podcast/feed or in iTunes at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=274122495.

You may have also noticed that when we have video for the feed, I try to post both a larger .avi and an iPod-formatted .m4v or .mp4. They are always the same content, but the .m4v is usually smaller because it’s reduced in resolution to fit iPods. Please feel free to download either or both. Also, as a convenience who visit the blog instead of subscribing to the podcast feed, the .m4v can be played in a Flash player on the blog just by clicking on the image.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #8- Kim Pease on using JMS with MQ Series and JBoss to orchestrate web services [9:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (379)
 VOSibilities podcast #8- Kim Pease on using JMS with MQ Series and JBoss to orchestrate web services [9:54m]: Download (73)

In our latest podcast episode, Mark Taber, CEO of Active Endpoints, discusses the relationship between BPEL and BPMN and why BPEL is the standards-based environment of choice for executing services-based applications. Mark also describes how BPMN can free users from the tyranny of proprietarty BPMS execution and, best of all, previews what Active Endpoints will be doing shortly in ActiveVOS to unite these two useful standards. Mark also discusses at a high level how we see the relationship between BPEL and BPMN and what we believe a visual orchestration system should enable users interested in these technologies to accomplish.

We hope you enjoy this podcast. We welcome feedback as a comment on the blog or via email to editor@activevos.com.

 

 VOSibilities podcast # 7: Mark Taber on BPMN and BPEL [9:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (117)

OK, at risk of obscuring my passionate post of earlier today about BPMN, BPEL and BPEL4People, it’s about time that we posted the pix of us at JavaOne. It’s taken a whole week because the Flickr plugin I tried earlier this week crashed the blog completely.

Anyway, I was motivated to do this this afternoon because our guys are calling everyone whom we met at JavaOne to follow-up. And just a few minutes ago, Mike Kettering came in to tell me a woman he spoke with had a great time at the party. It was so nice of her to tell Mike that she’d had a good time so long after the party ended.

Frankly, I don’t remember the party very well, but I know I had a blast. (-:

Just click on a thumbnail to see the photos from Flickr. Those big yellow bowls were actually lighted, though you can’t see it in the photos. And most of the other shots showing people palming big snifters are of people enjoying a 40oz cocktail masterpiece.

So, next time we invite you to a pahty, you’re gonna come, right?

I’ve been waiting to post this video podcast episode for a couple of weeks because I wanted to understand better all the vitriol and confusion in the marketplace between BPMN promoters on one side and BPEL proponents on the other

No less an authority than Bruce Silver noted over two years ago “…that the world of BPMS is divided into BPEL-lovers and BPEL-haters…” And as soon as I arrived at Active Endpoints last January, I could really feel the tension…an internecine battle among people who believe in the same outcome and passionately hold that standards-based technology is ultimately the correct path for customers.

But at the end of the day, there are two inescapable facts. First, BPMN is not executable. BPEL is. Together, they are a more potent, winning combination for customers than peanut butter and jelly. I just can’t understand why BPMN promoters skip over this fact.

This BPMN-bigot blind-spot this allows Lombardi, SAP and others to claim ”support” for standards and yet execute the processes on a proprietary execution engine. Isn’t that the maximum possible deprecation of BPMN? Isn’t it a violation of the original intent of BPMN to run it on proprietary engines, ensuring customers lose agility and increasing their costs? Why don’t BPMN people just loathe that idea?

We do, and that’s the second inescapable fact: no modelling-direct-to-execution technology has ever succeeded. That’s why BPEL4People is so important (and why we are on the BPEL4People Technical Committee and have implemented the current capabilities of BPEL4People in ActiveVOS 5).

It’s really pretty simple (and here comes a mixed metaphor I can’t believe I’m posting): dolphins don’t talk but old dogs can be taught new tricks. Dolphins may actually be smarter than humans, but they don’t speak in words. BPMN may be great, but it won’t run “on the metal.” OTOH, BPEL can be extended with human activities that are first-class participants in a BPEL orchestration. That ole dog sure can hunt.

Bottom line: BPEL and BPMN together is what kumbaya sounds like for BPMS. And today’s podcast episode is a proof point: watch how Mark Ford shows an orchestration that includes human workflow as a first-class participant and which is 100% standards-based. (And watch for us to shortly say a whole lot more about ActiveVOS and BPMS.)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #6: Mark Ford on BPEL4People [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (339)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #6: Mark Ford on BPEL4People [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (35)

Whew…it’s been a busy week. We were at JavaOne, threw a great party (pix soon, I promise), met lots of people and got lots of great feedback.

Oh, and speaking of parties, we crashed SAPPHIRE in Orlando. Yes, it was we who dressed up actors in prison uniforms labelled “SAP County Jail” on the back and had the actors hand out ActiveVOS demo CD’s labelled “SAP Liberation Plan” and “Evidence” during SAP’s big user convention last week.

Why? In two words: public service. SAP bigots may think that’s an over-the-top characterization of what they will label as a PR stunt. But there is a method to our madness. We are convinced that SAP is pulling the wool over users’ eyes about BPM. And while we are realistic about our chances of liberating today’s SAP users, we feel compelled to reach out to them just in case they want a get-out-of-proprietary-BPM-jail plan.

What am I talking about? Consider this interview with an SAP architect who says:

SAP NetWeaver already provides capabilities to model and execute business processes that include both automated activities as well as human-executed activities. As the BPEL4People standardization progresses we will presumably see more and more compliant implementations.

Isn’t it clever to conflate NetWeaver — the most closed, proprietary BPMS on the planet — with BPEL4People? If you can just get a little of that standards-based branding onto your proprietary platform (especially in an press interview about standards), it may be enough to keep the prisoners in lock-down and maybe even bring a new busload or two inside the gates.

By “…we will presumably see more and more compliant implementations” I presume SAP was referring to the announcement last week of SAP’s plans for BPM, in which they purport to “usher in a new era” in BPM. The interview was published before the press release was issued, but if this is what she was referring to, it looks like NetWeaver users looking to free their business processes from proprietary stacks have just had their jail sentences unilaterally extended.

Consider three points. FIrst, there’s not a single standard mentioned in this press release. That’s not ushering in a new era. That’s 1980 all over again. Second, notice the repeated use of the phrase “the planned implementation.” This is all about some SAP NetWeaver product you can’t actually get until Q1 2009. Can you say, “freeze-dry the prisoners until we’re ready?” Third, I fell asleep during a demo of this at JavaOne in which the demoer couldn’t even get a PowerPoint to work.

‘Nuff said (for now). Be sure to watch the hilarious video of our “prisoners” being harassed in Orlando as they attempt to hand out CD’s to arriving guests. We didn’t go inside the hall. We didn’t interfere with anyone…but SAP set the security people on us anyway. Guess a little standards-based competition is too much for the self-proclaimed ushers of a new era.

 

 Video of Active Endpoints attempting to liberate SAP users at SAPPHIRE [2:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (394)

Pssst…wanna have some fun at JavaOne? Join us for our Tiki Bar Party on Wednesday May 7, 2008. Get all the details here.

Why a Tiki Bar Party? Because we’re big, big fans of Tiki Bar TV and we wanted to have some fun ourselves. So, we maxed out on the kitsch and we’ve invited a bunch of people — including you — to join us.

But you have to work for those free cocktails (featuring unforgettable tipples like the BPEL Island Julep and the VOSarita). You gotta get two button at the show and then wear ‘em to the Bamboo Hut to get in. Pictures of these oh-so-cool-you’d-want-’em-anyway buttons are below. Where do you get the buttons? At the Active Endpoints and XAware booths, which are in Startup Row in the Pavilion.

How can you lose? Cool buttons, cooler drinks and fun people. Sounds like a pahhty. We hope to see you there. Remember: check out www.javaoneparty.com, print the invite and get those buttons to join us at the best party at JavaOne this year.

Here’s the Active Endpoints button:

 Here’s XAware’s button:

We are pleased to offer our first audio podcast. Until now, we’ve used our podcast feed to offer videos, webinar replays and news about Active Endpoints in PDF form.

Now, we are going to a more “classic” use of our podcast feed by providing audio interviews with the people inside Active Endpoints who are driving our product and market efforts. I hope to offer regular podcasts that span the gamut of topics: from marketing to technology with everything in between.

Enjoy this inaugural episode with Chris Keller, a founder of Active Endpoints, who I stuck in the “Wayback Machine” and asked a couple of tough historical questions. First, “Why BPEL”? And second, “What lead to the requirement for BPEL4People and WS-Human Task”?

 

 VOSibilities podcast #4: Chris Keller on Active Endpoints, BPEL and BPEL4People [14:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (169)

View a recording of the April 17, 2008 webinar BPEL Basics for Java Developers, presented by Active Endpoints’ Ron Romano and Alex Neihaus. This webinar was extraordinarily well-received and offers Java developers a conceptual introduction to SOA-based service orchestration using familar concepts.

There are two files in this post. The first file is formatted for an iPod and can be viewed here on the blog. Please be patient while the podcast downloads into the player. It is also available in our podcast feed (search on “vosibilities” in the iTunes Store to subscribe).

The second, a DivX-encoded AVI file, is significantly larger in size (@460MB) and can be downloaded for more comfortable viewing.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #3: BPEL Basics for Java Developers webinar April 17 2008 (iPod format) [91:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (782)
 VOSibilities podcast #3: BPEL Basics for Java Developers webinar April 17 2008 (DivX-encoded AVI) [91:49m]: Download (436)

I was reading Frank Cohen’s blog today (he was nice enough to help get the word out about our webinar on Java and BPEL this coming Thursday) and I ran across this very interesting comment Frank made after having attended a Java conference recently:

Java architects and developers are frustrated looking for Business Process Management (BPM) standards and tools. Brian Sletten’s talk…was titled “Avoiding ESBs” but could have been better described as “I’m sick and tired of waiting for vendors to give me a decent Business Process Management (BPM) platform!”

Here in VOSville, we think one of the mega VOSibilities (that’s posibilities for those of you who are already tired of my lame puns) that exists in the marketplace is at the junction of visual orchestration systems and BPM. I know, I know, this ain’t very specific. But, I can’t say anything more at the moment.

Let me just say that we are cooking up sumthin’ very special that will answer this precise criticism. And, I promise, you won’t have to wait long to see the water (and our competitors’ blood) boil.

But, you do have to wait. While you do, Frank was kind enough to send over information on a bootcamp his company is holding. Here’re the details. You should check it out.

Frank Cohen and Robert Schneider are putting on their Open-Source Test Automation Bootcamp, a 3-Day Hands-On Course, in Philadelphia on May 14-16, 2008. Companies such as AMD, Amazon, TV Guide, Ford, and The Jackson Labs sent their testers, architects, and managers to learn Frank and Rob’s test methodology, test patterns, and best practices. Plus they received hands-on training with free open-source test tools, including soapUI, Selenium, and PushToTest.

The Bootcamp delivers hands-on training to test Web applications, Web services, Ajax, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and REST applications to optimize these for performance, reliability, and proper function. The Seminar teaches practical methodology and techniques to surface performance bottlenecks and optimizations to improve scalability and throughput.

Bootcamp instructors Frank Cohen and Robert Schneider are the leading authorities and teachers for testing and optimizing software developed with Web, SOA, AJAX, and REST designs and implementations.

Details can be found at http://bootcamp.pushtotest.com

Active Endpoints today announced the Java Advancement Kit, a set of education, training and products that will enable Java developers to take the next step in their professional advancement by quickly and easily using web services to create compelling service orchestrations.

 Active Endpoints Announces the Java Advancement Kit: Download (258)

Please join us for an informative webinar on April 17 entitled BPEL Basics for Java Developers. Register here.

This informative webinar will help you expand your Java knowledge to acquire an understanding of the basics of BPEL. A high-level overview of BPEL and its importance in a web-services environment will be presented, along with a brief discussion of the basic BPEL activities and how they relate to Java concepts. The following topics will be covered:
• Parsing the Language of SOA with Java as a guide
• Breaking out of the VM: evolving from RPC to Web Services
• BPEL Activities - Receive, Reply, Invoke • BPEL Facilities - Fault Handling and Compensation (“Undo”)

We hope you can join us.

Try as I might, I can’t find a single line of source code in the download of Intalio’s Community Edition ”open source BPMS.” Imagine my surprise at this considering they have been claiming open source leadership for years. They even call themselves “the leading Open Source BPMS company.” Sure, you can find source code for individual piece parts if you go to another website and find it as part of Intalio’s donations to open source projects, but here I am talking about their claims of open source leadership in regards to their Community Edition product.

Because of the complexity of enterprise software, I believe software companies have to hold themselves to a higher level of “truth in labelling.” We don’t like it when toothpaste has antifreeze in it. And I don’t like it when an purportedly open source product has no source and licensing restrictions that sound like they were written in Redmond or Walldorf.

It may be simplistic but calling something “open source” means you get source code. While Sandy Kemsley finds it amusing when I quote Wikipedia, the simple fact is that Wikipedia’s definition of FOSS says open source allows users to “…study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code” (emphasis mine). To call yourself the “open source leader” and to launch an “open source service” (whatever that is) means you should conform to the conventional definition of what FOSS is. And that ain’t what Intalio is doing, near as I can tell.

I was recently fact-checking an upcoming analyst report on BPMS in which the author mentioned in passing that Intalio didn’t actually include source in its Community Edition downloads. I was dumbfounded (and more than a little miffed that these analysts could so blithely give these guys a pass on so fundamental a point).

Incredulous, I asked our product management people to take a look. As willing as I am to call Intalio out for misleading users about its Community Edition, I am still not willing to cut and paste the heated analysis I got back from the product managers. So, let me try to summarize:

• As far as we can tell, the license included with their product includes the restriction that users may not “…decompile, disassemble, or otherwise reverse engineer or attempt to reconstruct or discover any source code or underlying ideas or algorithms of the Intalio Software by any means whatsoever…” (again, emphasis mine)
• As far back as 2006, Intalio was happy allow confusion between “open source-like” and real open source in its licensing to morph into “open source leadership.” (Here, you have to knock Gartner for not being more consistent and giving Intalio the room to claim open source street cred undeservedly.)
• At the end of the day, Intalio’s claim of an open source mantle isn’t about standards or FOSS, it’s about its sales model.

It’s that last point that I really object to. It’s OK to be proprietary. It’s OK not to ship the source code. What’s not OK is to use the terminology of standards and open source to confuse users for the (very legitimate) purpose of driving sales. That’s just misleading.

One of the reasons I really enjoy working with application development software so much is the vitality of the online community. My recent post reacting to what I perceived as a dismissal of BPEL4People generated both responses and traffic for this, our brand spankin’ new blog. Unlike other technology areas, app dev — and the SOA world in particular — is full of well-thought-through blogs and fascinating personalities. I appreciate readers who have taken the time to find us and who are interested in what we have to say.

And, as the newbie in this universe, I seem to have stepped into the middle of a BPMN versus BPEL discussion. My post was perceived by some as exactly that: one should pick BPEL or BPMN. It felt like I got into a religious war, with competing accolytes for each side doing that shout-over-the-wall-at-the-other-side thing.

I want to make sure we are clear about how we view BPEL and BPMN. Over this last weekend, I had an email discussion with Mark Taber, our CEO, which I’d like to paraphrase to make sure everyone understands what we think is important for customers who are trying to orchestrate services that include human tasks. In short,

• We understand people are adopting BPMN. It’s a standard…and our company is all about standards.
• Today, BPMN is being used mostly for notation..that’s OK, but unless it’s executable it’s not any more relevant to writing an application than Visio is.
• If you want you BPMN notations to be executable, today that means buying proprietary execution stacks, which lock up your business process logic better than a life sentence at Guantanamo Bay.
• BPMN is only going to be useful when you can output it to a standardized, open and executable language. Guess what: we think that’s BPEL.

So, far from dissin’ BPMN, we think it’s got it’s legs…but the legs are built of BPEL.

As a kid, I was fascinated by Etch-a-Sketch toys. But I gave it up when I realized that after hours and hours and hours of drawing, my artwork (if you could call it that) was locked into the toy. I couldn’t change it easily and one simple shake would destroy the entire picture. That analogy holds perfectly for BPMN without BPEL: you can etch-a-sketch all your business processes with it, but if you want to run it, the BPMN ends up inside some vendor’s proprietary execution stack.

What standards-based SOA implementation wants that?

Well, this is my first real “content” post and I am about to challenge no less than eminent industry notable and EDS Fellow Fred Cummins, who recently took the opportunity to declare BPEL4People dSOAoa (pronounced d-SEW-ah-oh-ah and meaning “Dead SOA on arrival”).

I am not sure if Fred’s problem core problem is with BPEL4People as much as it is with BPEL itself, which he dismisses as “for programmers.” But it’s clear he doesn’t think much of either standard, favoring instead BPMN. And I’ll be the first to admit that I am not the one who can specifically refute many of his technical arguments.

But I do know one thing: being “for programmers” when it comes to standards-based workflow ain’t a bad thing. That’s because from my relatively non-technical perspective, two things have always been true about workflow systems. First, the support for them in programming languages has been abominable and, second, every single end-user workflow system that has ever been tried has been a failure.

If the charge is “BPEL (and therefore BPEL4People) is a programming language,” then my counter-charge is that BPMN is about non-executable pretty pictures. Wikipedia says, “The primary goal of BPMN is to provide a standard notation that is readily understandable by all business stakeholders…”

Pretty diagrams do not a business application make.

In short, workflow is something that has to be developed into an application, not “specified” by some end-user on a canvas. That’s because while you can expect a developer to be capable of understanding the workflow process and adapting it to the application, you can be certain an end-user won’t be able to integrate his or her expert-level knowledge of the business process into a database or transaction system.

One area I suspect Fred and I agree on, though, is the need for standards. Another reason workflow has been ineffective in business applications is that business are loathe to lock up their processes in proprietary formats. What BPEL4People and BPMN offer users is the opportunity to free themselves from proprietary workflow engines, which is surely a good thing.

Today, Active Endpoints announced availability of ActiveBPEL Community Edition Server 5.0. The community edition contains the first implementation of BPEL4People.

Also today, OASIS announced the formation of a technical committee focused on finalizing the BPEL4People specification. We are participating in this technical committee and look forward to BPEL4People once and for all eliminating proprietary workflow from enterprise applications.

You can read more about Community Edition in our press release, attached to this post.

 Active Endpoints announces milestone 1 of Community Edition with BPEL4People: Download (330)