Personally I am not in favor of standardizing on any
one particular representation. Instead I was thinking more of the location of
objects on the page and the location and route followed by lines to connect
objects together. I was not thinking of the visual representation of ICONs as
depending on your preference, you might want to use different
ones.
Other
things to think about is the idea of pages that contain subsets of perhaps a
large process so that you have multi-page documents.
My
thoughts on what needs doing is nowhere neare complete so the idea is that there
is a sub-committee that thinks about the issues, make recommendations and then
determines how to move forward if agreed.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Rajesh Pradhan
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2003 5:09
PM
To: 'Burdett, David'
Cc: 'WS BPEL
(E-mail)'
Subject: RE: [wsbpel] A Topic for the
F2F?
Hi
David,
Good
thoughts ! I assume that by Visual Extensions you mean the visual
representations ( icons and such like ) to depict the BPEL
constructs.
I
wonder if this should be a part of the specification though ? For
instance, we have created an internal POC that uses a UML Profile
to model the constructs - seems to work I guess.
My
feeling is that tool vendors will prefer to create their own visual
interpretations of the BPEL artifacts. On the flip side, I feel, if we do
insist on standardization, then UML seems to be the best
bet.
Regards,
Rajesh.
-----Original Message-----
From: Burdett, David
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, May 22,
2003 4:47 PM
To: 'Tony Andrews'; Burdett, David; WS BPEL
(E-mail)
Subject: RE: [wsbpel] A Topic for the
F2F?
Tony
Thanks for the comments, I agree, that "Business Process Execution
Language" is a bit of a misnomer and perhaps it should be simply called a
"Process Execution Language" ... but let's not go there
...
As
far as including the Visual Binding extensions in BPEL natively is concerned
I think we can actually separate the work into two
parts:
1.
Identify WHAT additional information needs to be held to identify the
graphical information, and
2.
Design HOW to represent that information. At this point we can choose to
include it within the BPEL language or have a separate language. We can also
decide whether it goes in the same spec e.g. in an Appendix or in a separate
spec.
The point is that we do not have to decide immediately HOW to specify
it.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Andrews
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2003
4:33 PM
To: Burdett, David; WS BPEL (E-mail)
Subject:
RE: [wsbpel] A Topic for the F2F?
I just wanted to comment on your first assumption
below. The "business protocol" extensions in BPEL are very much about
describing behavior, as opposed to execution. A BPEL abstract process
definition is a useful description of behavior regardless of how the
service is implemented. I would even argue that "business protocol" may be
an unfortunate name for this given that we're really talking
about services in a more general sense. The two usage
styles - "executable processes" and "business protocols" can each be
used independently or together as appropriate.
Regarding your real point, I wonder if a set of
standard annotations and extensions within the BPEL document itself would
be sufficient. Separating these into different documents seems troubling
to me.
Tony
From: Burdett, David
[mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, May 22,
2003 3:45 PM
To: WS BPEL (E-mail)
Subject: [wsbpel] A
Topic for the F2F?
Here's a topic
I would like to suggest for discussion at the F2F.
THE
PROBLEM
The problem
arises because of three assumptions that I believe are
valid:
1. BPEL is an
"execution only" language, i.e. it is desgined to be something that can be
input into software and run, e.g. using some "BPEL Run Time"
software
2. BPEL will
often be defined and maintained with the aid of some GUI based "BPEL
Design Time" software that allows the process to be
visualised.
3. The BPEL Design Time software will
contain additional positional and graphical information about the visual
representation of the BPEL design that not contained in the BPEL XML
definitions.
The problem is
that this means that exporting a BPEL definition from one BPEL Design Time
for input into another will result in a BPEL definition that will not be
easily editable as all the graphical information would be lost.
In the
extreme, for a complex design, it could mean that designer of business
processes using BPEL is effectively locked into the BPEL Design Time
software provider that they initially choose. This I don't think is a good
idea.
THE SOLUTION
?
To solve this
problem I would like to suggest the setting up of a sub-committe of the TC
that has responsibilty for developing a "BPEL Visual Binding"
specification which would contain the relevant visual information from the
BPEL Design Time. The idea would be that the Visual Binding specification
is a separate document to the main BPEL
specification. Also BPEL Design Time Implementations could export
either:
1. The BPEL
XML Definition alone, or
2. The
BPEL XML Definition PLUS the BPEL Visual Binding
The former
could be used for input to a BPEL Run Time and the latter could be input
into some other BPEL Design Time.
By creating a
separate, but related, specification, it should be possible to carry out
the work on the BPEL Visual Binding specifcation in parallel, without
hindering any work on the main BPEL specification.
Regards
David
Director, Product Management, Web
Services
Commerce One
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