Comments on: BPEL4People Revisited

By: BPMS Watch » Another View on BPEL

BPMS Watch » Another View on BPEL — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:40:01 +0000

[...] My sources tell me that IBM and SAP have been meeting actively to put forth a BPEL4People spec later this spring, an activity that for some reason the companies’ lawyers have shrouded in secrecy. If you recall my original post on this topic, the essence of the BPEL4People white paper is a new BPEL People activity that allows human task management to be integrated more directly with the BPEL logic than is possible with standard Invoke and an external task management service. That means BPEL4People “breaks” BPEL 2.0 engines, except for those with the foresight to implement the People activity. What, you don’t have the specs for that? Oh, that’s right… [...]

By: BPMS Watch » Intalio Expands Open Source BPM

BPMS Watch » Intalio Expands Open Source BPM — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:16:12 +0000

[...] Intalio, which calls itself the Open Source BPMS Company, yesterday announced the donation of a BPMN modeling tool to the open source community, and tomorrow plans to add a “BPEL4People-based” workflow framework. The BPMN modeler, donated to the Eclipse Foundation, is now available under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) and is part of the SOA Tools Platform (STP) project. This follows Intalio’s donation of its EMF model comparator to the Eclipse Foundation earlier this year, and complements the PXE BPEL Engine it previously donated to the Apache Software Foundation. Tomorrow, Intalio plans to announce the availability of its Tempo workflow framework under the open-source Apache Software License. The project is hosted by SourceForge. Intalio describes Tempo as an implementation of the BPEL4People proposal from IBM and SAP last year, although that proposal, discussed previously on BPMS Watch here, is 15 months later still just a vague “white paper,” not a spec. It is not clear, for instance, whether Tempo implements all of the process-task configurations described by the white paper. IBM and SAP previously indicated that support for all of the configurations would be required for “compliance.” [...]

By: BPMS Watch » Another View on BPEL4People

BPMS Watch » Another View on BPEL4People — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:41:53 +0000

[...] Anyway, since my original post was from February (before I even had my own blog), I’m hoping for a restart on the discussion of BPEL4People. What’s the right way to include human tasks in a BPEL process, and why? [...]

By: Gendal World

Gendal World — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 21:28:26 +0000

Perhaps I should read my own documentation……

If I’m going to criticise somebody for not knowing my products, it would be better if I didn’t pick on someone who wrote the whitepaper we advertise on our homepage….. :-)…

By: BPMS Watch » Is Workflow “Back”? (Did It Ever Go Away?)

BPMS Watch » Is Workflow “Back”? (Did It Ever Go Away?) — Thu, 18 May 2006 21:07:48 +0000

[...] Those offerings stand in contrast to the service orchestration style, what Keith calls EAI-oriented, in which there is basically just one activity type that “does” anything — in BPEL it’s called Invoke — meaning all process activities need to expose the same interface, such as WSDL. Stateful activities where a simple WSDL doesn’t work too well — such as human tasks — don’t fit the model, so service orchestration BPMS’s either ignore human tasks altogether or define some kind of task management service to manage the interaction. The fact that BPEL makes human tasks a second-class citizen in the process is what is motivating the BPEL4People proposal from IBM and SAP. See this for a deeper discussion of that. There are numerous other differences between workflow-style and orchestration-style offerings that have a lot more to do with their currently distinct target markets than with the fundamentals of their architecture. I might blog about that later, but not now. [...]

By: BPMS Watch » Nobody Cares About BPM?

BPMS Watch » Nobody Cares About BPM? — Tue, 16 May 2006 17:24:34 +0000

[...] First of all, let’s look at the technology maturity. We’re just on the threshold of doing it right! How can you be bailing now? We’ve been going for a year now on beta software and standards. BPEL 2.0? Due this summer. BPEL4People and BPEL-SPE (subprocess extension)? Probably Q4. The BPMN metamodel (BPDM from OMG) and schema? Not out yet — hopefully soon. Integrated modeling and simulation in BPMS from BEA, Oracle, and others? Still 6-12 months away. BPMN as a front end to BPEL? Just coming out now - Intalio (beta), Cordys (beta), eClarus (GA this month), IDS Scheer, Telelogic…. BPMN-BPEL roundtripping? Just beginning, about a year away. [...]

By: Francis Ip

Francis Ip — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:13:29 +0000

Retro-fitting human elements into BPMS are just another IT legacy that persists when IT mindset prevails. As long as users are always outside the boundary of a system, that is what one would expect. Not everything can be or should be automated. Technologies are just tools that assist human beings to perform work more efficiently. It would be interesting to see how the BPEL4People will support “job shop” and “flow shop” scheduling for people. There are several classes of scheduling problems that are intractable. In essence, no optimal solution exists for those problems. Priority of work keeps on changing when unforeseen events arise. Moreover, many people don’t work with computers most of the time.

By: Ismael Ghalimi

Ismael Ghalimi — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:13:06 +0000

Tom,

Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated!

By: Tom Welsh

Tom Welsh — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:12:43 +0000

I’m surprised, given their previous record, that they didn’t call it “BPEL4ppl”. Seriously, thanks for the great blog and all the useful articles â€” I’m finding it most helpful, as I’m sure are many others.

By: Managing knowledge proces

Managing knowledge proces — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 01:12:10 +0000

BPEL4People revisited…

Interesting thought about the BPEL4People (an extension to BPEL2.0 proposed by SAP and IBM) by Bruce Silver in ITRedux.BPEL4People revisited and the white paper:BPEL4People…