VOSibilities

In episode #5 of our continuing webinar series on technical topics of interest to developers, architects and business analysts working with SOA-based business process management systems (BPMS), Dr. Michael Rowley, CTO, Active Endpoints compares and contrasts two different styles of message correlation. In episode #4, Michael outlined message correlation as defined by the BPEL standard. In this episode, Michael illustrates a different style of correlation, which relies on the execution engine to correlate incoming messages to specific processes. Michael also describes when and how each style (BPEL-managed vs. engine-managed) can be used and notes some pros and cons for each style.

There are two attached versions of the webinar replay (an iPod-formatted .m4v and a DivX-encoded .avi). As always, you can register for the next episode of CTO Tuesdays at http://www.activevos.com/ctot. We look forward to your comments, suggestions and feedback.

 CTO Tuesdays #5: Engine-managed correlation [30:10m]: Download (382)
 CTO Tuesdays #5: Engine-managed correlation [30:10m]: Download (348)

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we (finally) have replays of episode #4 of CTO Tuesdays, our regular weekly webinar on BPM topics of interest to process designers and developers. The subject of this webinar is message correlation, an interesting topic that details how systems match up running processes and the messages for those running processes.

The bad news is that due to a technical issue, the audio for the host, our own Sonal Rajan, wasn’t recorded. This is shame because at the end of each topic, we always have an open Q&A session on the current topic to amplify the technical discussion. Unfortunately, these replays won’t have that Q&A because there’s no audio for the moderator. However, the actual presentation about message correlation was recorded just fine.

In the two attached versions of the webinar replay (an iPod-formatted .m4v and a DivX-encoded .avi), I have edited most of the silent introduction and the Q&A.

As always, you can register for the next episode of CTO Tuesdays at http://www.activevos.com/ctot.

 CTO Tuesdays #4: Message correlation [35:53m]: Download (431)
 CTO Tuesdays #4: Message correlation [35:53m]: Download (460)

BPMN 2.0 and WS-BPEL 2.0 are the two most important standards for BPM today. But why are there two? Can’t you just care about BPEL or just care about BPMN? In fact, both standards matter and the two should be used together. To back that up, I have to convince you both that BPEL needs BPMN and that BPMN needs BPEL. In today’s post, I’ll concentrate on the first: why BPEL needs BPMN.

First, lets assume that you are convinced of the value of BPEL. You see that it is a great high-level language for creating business processes and orchestrating services. Its service-centric approach is simpler and better for long-term manageability and reuse than other approaches to business process management. It is an accepted OASIS standard with multiple vendor implementations, so investments in BPEL processes are not tied to a single vendor and you can find people who already know the language without having to train them from scratch.

But if you are convinced you want BPEL, why should you care about BPMN? There are two main reasons:

1) To get the value of a standard notation;

2) To improve collaboration with a wide variety of stakeholders in the process, since BPMN is a significant simplification over existing notations used for BPEL.

When WS-BPEL 2.0 was standardized, the OASIS Technical Committee chose not to standardize a graphical notation for it. This was unfortunate, since no one creates a business process by writing BPEL in XML, which is the only standardized representation. Every vendor, and every BPEL developer, creates their processes using a graphical representation, but that representation is different for every tool.

And the notations used by these tools haven’t really been very good. They typically provide a one-to-one correspondence between control flow constructs in BPEL and things on the canvas. However, if you use the BPMN notation, it shows a notation that can mostly be understood without any knowledge of BPEL or even BPMN for that matter (as long as the labels are chosen carefully).

Let me make both of these points with the help of a trivial process example. Take a look at the BPMN representation of a process that I’ll call the “Question” process.

(Click on each image to see a larger version)

It is trivial to follow what is going on, especially if you know the standard notation. You can’t tell by looking at this diagram, but I’ve used two different BPEL mechanisms for getting to the next activity. I use a BPEL link to get from “Receive Q” to the first diamond (the beginning of the BPEL if statement). I use a BPEL sequence to get from the second diamond (the end of the if) to the “Record Answer” activity.

The user who is looking at the graphical representation of the process doesn’t need to know about the distinction between these two mechanisms, so the diagram doesn’t show a difference. The developer may want to know about the difference, so ActiveVOS highlights them differently on mouse-over and shows them differently in the “process outline view”, but that isn’t really important for today’s discussion.

What is important is how different the process is represented in different tools due to the fact that no notation had been standardized. I’ll show what this process looks like in three different BPEL process designers.

Here is how ActiveVOS would represent this process in previous versions of the product (or using the optional “classic” style in 7.0):

Here is how the Eclipse BPEL Designer represents it:

And, here is how the designer for Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager represents it:

In all three of these representations, each of the paths through the if statement are represented by a bounding box. The problem with this representation is that nested if statements can result in so many nested bounding boxes that it is hard to follow what is going on. BPMN simply has arrows through each path and the paths merge back into a single control flow at a gateway diamond.

Also notice the differences in the handling of links vs. sequences. Both ActiveVOS classic and Eclipse represent sequences with their own bounding boxes, then any arrow that is a direct child of a sequence box is known to belong to the sequence, rather than being a real link. Eclipse also draws the links in different color. The extra sequence icon and corresponding bounding box just interferes with the ability for non-technical users to follow what is going on in the process.

Oracle’s designer is odd in this respect. Sequences are not shown in a bounding box, so they don’t clutter up the control flow (a good thing in my opinion), but links aren’t shown at all! There is a link from the “Receive_Q” activity to the if statement, but there isn’t any representation of it on the diagram. It shows the “Receive_Q” and the if as if they happen in parallel. You have to look into the properties of “Receive_Q” to discover that it has an outgoing link, and further rummaging to find out where it goes.

The BPMN representation is, by far, the easiest version of this small process to understand. The process illustrates just three constructs whose representation is simpler with BPMN than with other approaches: ifs, sequences and links. The other BPEL constructs are generally as easy or easier for non-technical users to understand than previous approaches.

But, as valuable as the improvement in readability may be, the greater value that BPMN brings to be BPEL is probably consistency. Having different tools represent similar constructs in such different ways is detrimental to one of the key values in having a standard: skills portability. With a common notation, people will be able to carry their knowledge of how to understand and work with standards-based business processes between vendor tools. It will also create a greater incentive for people to learn these technologies and for schools to teach them. After all, people aren’t usually to thrilled about investing a lot of energy into learning proprietary technologies, and no school really wants to be teaching proprietary technologies.

This week’s topic on CTO Tuesdays was an introduction to the new WS-HumanTask standard for workflow. In this informative session, Michael Rowley describes the importance of the new standard for workflow, how it separates tasks from processing and how WS-HumanTask enables human activities to be seen as services in a process application.

Attached to this post are three files. A PDF of the slides Dr. Rowley presented, an iPod-formatted .m4v file (which requires QuickTime or iTunes to be installed) and a more-or-less standard .avi file. The .avi is the larger of the two video files.

Due to a technical error (I didn’t press “show” on GoToMeeting), the first few minutes of the video show Michael’s slides, not the ones I am discussing. Since this is just an introduction, you won’t miss anything. I’ve put those “missing” slides into the .pdf file, so you can follow along if you want to.

We had a very lively panel discussion at the end of the presentation; I hope you’ll have the time to listen to the discussion that follows the presentation.

As always, we are very interested in your feedback, comments and topic suggestions.

One more note: you can always register for the upcoming CTO Tuesdays session by visiting http://www.activevos.com/ctot. We hope you join us for next week’s webinar.

 CTO Tuesdays #2: Introduction to WS-HumanTask [49:03m]: Download (8505)
 CTO Tuesdays #2: Introduction to WS-HumanTask [48:56m]: Download (1088)
 CTO Tuesdays #2: Introduction to WS-HumanTask: Download (308)

ActiveVOS and SoftConEx have announced that their products have been combined to deliver a revolution in airline ticketing workflow for distributors, business travel service companies and travel portals. Details are in the press release attached to this post.

 ActiveVOS BPM and SoftConEx Revolutionize Airline Ticketing: Download (371)

At Gartner’s BPM Summit in October, ebizQ’s Peter Schooff talked with me (Alex Neihaus) and Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley about ActiveVOS 7.0 and its new BPMN 2.0 modeler. A link to the podcast is below and it is included in our podcast feed in the iTunes Store.

 

 eBizQ podcast:How BPMS Delivers Value to Today's Business [4:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (134)

We are very pleased to post the recording of the first episode of our new weekly webinar on BPM technology called CTO Tuesdays.

Every Tuesday, Active Endpoints’ CTO Michael Rowley, will present a topic of interest to BPM users. Our inaugural topic was an explanation of the meaning and uses of the BPMN 2.0 diamond symbol. If you are interested in learning BPMN 2.0 — or if you just want to brush up on some of the more advanced considerations in using this basic BPMN symbol — you will find this recording very instructive. Concepts are demonstrated in ActiveVOS 7’s new BPMN 2.0 modeler.

Attached to this post are two versions of the webinar: an iPod-formatted .m4v file our podcast subscribers will automatically receive and an H.264-encoded .avi file (which is much larger at about 113MB).

We welcome your input and suggestions for CTO Tuesdays. Contact us via email at editor at activevos dot com. Today, the best way to be notified of upcoming CTO Tuesdays is to be on our mailing list. And, the best way to get onto our mailing list is to download a trial of ActiveVOS. You can also register for upcoming CTO Tuesdays by clicking on the link in the right hand column of any interior page on www.activevos.com.

We are working hard on making registering for CTO Tuesdays easier. But because of the demand for education on topics like BPMN 2.0, we started the webinar series without waiting to dot all the “i’s” and cross all our “t’s.”

Update: You can now register for CTO Tuesdays by clicking the link in the right-hand column of any page on www.activevos.com except the home page. So, just navigate into the site a little and you’ll get a little reward: easy access to registration for CTO Tuesdays.

Updated update: You can now always register for the upcoming CTO Tuesdays at http://www.activevos.com/ctot.

We hope you enjoy this recording and that you will join us as your schedule permits for the live CTO Tuesdays every Tuesday at noon ET, 9am PT, 16:00 GMT (17:00 GMT after the end of US daylight savings time in November, 2009).

 

 CTOT #1: The BPMN diamond [39:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (4605)
 CTOT #1: The BPMN diamond [39:30m]: Download (7409)

Last week, CTO Michael Rowley and I showed ActiveVOS 7 to Rob Barry of TechTarget’s SOA Talk blog.  I know it’s a party foul to quote yourself in a blog post, but we are grateful that Rob chose to highlight one of the main accomplishments we believe we have achieved for BPM in ActiveVOS 7:

“BPM suites that focus on business users, they don’t get technical enough,” said Alex Neihaus, VP of marketing at Active Endpoints. “They become islands of computing and sit off by themselves. And with BPMS for architects and developers, the level of cost and complexity is beyond the level of what most people are willing to undertake.”

This “third way” between the cost and complexity of stacks from Oracle and IBM and the unfulfilled promises of Lombardi and Pegasystems to integrate easily across the enterprise are why we believe we have become so popular among development teams. Looking past old buying habits and the new politics of “end user” BPM, our customers are seeking great technology at an affordable price that can be used to create integrated processes as that are themselves services.

You can read Rob’s entire blog post here.

Today, Active Endpoints is announcing a success story that we believe demonstrates the flexibility and capability of ActiveVOS and also makes us proud of the way the product has been used. As you can see in the press release attached to this post, ActiveVOS is being used to implement the business processes necessary to implement smart electrical grids in Scandinavia.

Building a smart grid means changing many of the core things a utility does that involve customers. It’s nitty-gritty operations like ordering new meters…getting them installed…making sure billing systems can handle customers who sell energy back to the grid and/or are interruptible.

We are very excited that ActiveVOS is BPMS has been chosen to help the global effort to become more energy-smart.

BTW, ActiveVOS 7 is now available for download.

 ActiveVOS BPMS Supports Deployment of Automatic Meter Management in Sweden: Download (408)

As we promised in part 1 of of our discussion on the new features in the ActiveVOS 7 BPMS, we are delighted to post part 2 of a conversation among me (Alex Neihaus), Luc Clément and Michael Rowley. In this second podcast, Michael and Luc cover topics that are of interest to enterprise architects, developers and operations staff. Topics include continuous development (including support for the open-source Hudson project) and new features in the BPMN designer that improve productivity and operational enhancements.

We hope you enjoy this podcast.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #37: ActiveVOS 7.0, part 2 [28:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1612)

We are very pleased to announce ActiveVOS 7.0. The full press release is attached to this post. You might also be interested in seeing our new screenshot tours, browsing detail about the new release’s features and reading What’s New in ActiveVOS 7.0.

 Active Endpoints announces ActiveVOS 7.0: Download (451)

We’re very excited to be able to post a sneak preview of the brand-new BPMN 2.0 designer that’s coming in ActiveVOS 7.0.

We’ve also posted a screenshot tour of our new ActiveVOS Central application.

We hope to have additional screenshot galleries up soon.

ActiveVOS 7.0 is a major new release of the business process management system (BPMS) that development teams love. The document attached to this post gives an overview of new features in the release. The document discusses the new BPMN 2.0-compliant modeler with BPEL execution and no round-trip problems, a new AJAX capable services-based forms designer and ActiveVOS Central. ActiveVOS Central is a complete, out-of-the-box solution for managing work, accessing reports and graphs of system activity and creating processes. In addition, the document describes additional new features of the BPMS that improve productivity and enhance collaboration between an extended development team and end users.

This version is a draft of the What’s New in ActiveVOS 7.0 document. Please check back frequently for updated versions.

 What's New in ActiveVOS 7.0: Download (1007)

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Michael Rowley, Active Endpoints CTO, will be presenting a talk on the Service Component Architecture (SCA) at the UCLA Java Users Group on Thursday, August 27, 2009. Details are in the media advisory attached to this post.

 Media Advisory: Rowley to present SCA at UCLA Java User's Group: Download (228)

I’m pleased that my recent disagreement with JP Morgenthal was noticed by Joe McKendrick, on his Service Oriented blog, and by Loraine Lawson at ITBusinessEdge. Now, having set the record straight, we can step back a little and start a more general discussion about SCA and why it’s a powerful new approach for developing applications. Loraine made a few comments in particular that got me thinking more about the value of SCA to a chief architect who is “prioritizing and rationalizing applications from an enterprise perspective.”

Once this architect has prioritized the needs of IT for the enterprise, it is critical that the architect’s development team has the right “tools” to update or create the applications that will meet those enterprise priorities. The development team also wants to improve its ability to maintain the application in the long run. I put the word “tools” in quotes in the previous sentence to emphasize the fact that I am using the word in its most general form. Your programming language is a tool. The design patterns you follow are tools. And, of course, the middleware infrastructure you use is a tool. J.P. is just wrong to assert that SCA will lock you into dependency on a vendor. There is no reason that middleware has to lock you in to a vendor any more than using a programming language locks you into a vendor, but that is only true if the middleware uses…

standards (and the right standards at that). If SCA were just some vendor’s tool that was promising great things, J.P. and everyone else would be right to be skeptical. But it isn’t proprietary, it’s a standard.

There are a few important reasons why this is important. It is always difficult to hire people who are skilled in a vendor’s proprietary technology and any application that depends on the technology is always at risk, since the vendor may choose to “improve” the technology in a direction that is retrograde for you. Or, the vendor could possibly abandon it altogether.

A good middleware standard is like a high-level language. It raises the level of abstraction that developers work in, so they can think about the actual problem being solved instead of fiddling with bits – or SOAP headers.  There are three recent standards that do exactly this: BPEL, BPMN and SCA.  BPEL is a language that is specifically designed around creating and using services, so it is also inherently middleware. Then there is BPMN, which standardizes the notation — the look of the business process on the design canvas — so that developers and non-developers alike can share an understanding of what is going on. And finally there is SCA, which allows developers to create, wire, package and deploy services without having to sweat the details of the numerous WS-* standards for every service that is created or used.  It, like high-level languages, raises the level of abstraction without significantly constraining what a developer can accomplish.

Forcing a development team to avoid recent advances in middleware today would be like having a manager in the 1970’s forcing their developers to program in assembler due to a mistrust of languages like FORTRAN. Productivity would suffer.