Tuesday, 28 October 2008

Executable BPMN call for action

In BPMI.org Redux Ismael Ghalimi of Intalio calls for participation in a group to sort out a true executable BPMN. The tentatively titled BPMNLab looks to be a good practical approach to the issues.
  • What consitututes executable BPMN?
  • Are there useful BPMN flow patterns that cannot be translated into WS-BPEL? If so, how are they best dealt with to produce an executable?
After what has been a bit of sniping from the sidelines on my part, I would be happy to be involved in this effort.
The transformation to BPEL approach seems to me pretty sound. Here is a working language definition appropriate for the BPM domain that is capable of withstanding rigorous assurance testing. Why attempt to define another?

A few BPMN constructs may produce really ugly BPEL code, but who cares except for a few developers in Intalio and the like who have to develop the transformation code. The last thing that anyone in the real world should be doing is fiddling with the generated code. I am reminded of a very successful Unisys product LINC which developed totally unreadable and arguably inefficient COBOL code. In years of use, we had no more reason to look at the generated intermediate COBOL than the final machine level code.


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