Re: [service-orientated-architecture] BPEL+

[Keith Harrison-Broninski]

Yes, indeed, Amit.  Neither Steve nor I dispute that a process specified in BPMN can be translated to BPEL.  What we are asking, is why bother? I can see no good argument for translating a BPMN process description into BPEL rather than directly into components built in (say) J2EE or .NET.  As explained in a previous post, BPMN is not a formally sound language - so you can't hope for the chance to prove anything about an orchestration originally described using BPMN (as you could, for instance, with a choreography originally described in WS-CDL).  So a BPEL description generated from BPMN is just a white elephant - a totally unnecessary intermediate stage.  You can administer, monitor, and analyze processes implemented directly as components just as easily as processes implemented via BPEL - probably more easily given the maturity of existing component tooling. And this is not even to mention the original focus of this thread, which is the weakness of BPEL as an implementation language and consequent need for proprietary extensions - it is likely that a real-world BPEL process will be less portable than a J2EE/.NET component, not more portable. Even if BPEL staggers on for a few years, which is likely given the investment into it by platform vendors (more fool they), it offers negative ROI so will eventually disappear  - and I don't think many experienced enterprise architects will bemoan its passing!  BPM for enterprise automation will become equivalent to flowchart-based tools for component development and maintenance.  Useful, but hardly the "third wave" revolution predicted for BPM. IMHO, the advent of BPMN spells the end of BPM as we know it, at least for enterprise automation - which is a shame, perhaps, but there you are.  In its place, I see (my personal interest area of) human collaborative processes taking its place in the limelight, not as a server technology but as a peer-to-peer technology. -- All the best Keith http://keith.harrison-broninski.info Amit Gupta (FSI) wrote: Hi Keith,   Thanks for informative post....  Here's a key message describing relationship (and difference in focus) of BPMN and BPEL (from http://www.bpmn.org/Documents/FAQ.htm)  What is the relationship between BPMN and BPEL? BPEL is an XML-based language for describing a business process in which most of the tasks represent interactions between the process and external Web services. The BPEL process itself is represented as a Web service, and is realized by a BPEL engine which executes the process description. BPMN is a standard set of diagramming conventions for describing business processes. It is designed to visualize a rich set of process flow semantics within a process and the communication between independent processes. It is intended to support capture of sufficient detail to allow it to be the source of an executable process description. Since BPEL is currently considered the most important standard for execution languages, a translation to BPEL is specified in the BPMN standard. Thanks, Amit Gupta YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS  Visit your group "service-orientated-architecture" on the web.    To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]    Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.