I was in a panel discussion at a conference this week, and was surprised to notice there's still no consensus about whether or not a process engine (or rather, support for automated BPM) is a "must" for SOA.
Well OK, not really surprised, but I still would be interested in the group's opinion. There were two views: 1. BPM and SOA are orthogonal concepts - you can do one without the other. It's perfectly OK to have a SOA where there is no BPM/Workflow/ BPEL engine involved anywhere. (This is my view). 2. SOA is all about automating business processes via orchestration of services, so a process engine is a necessary part of an SOA effort. What do you think? Best regards, Stefan -- Stefan Tilkov, http://www.innoq.com/blog/st/
