Re: Terminology - What is a process? Was: Internal processes an d/or external choreographies (was RE: Ev ents and States ...

+1 to that
On Monday, April 14, 2003, at 05:43  pm, Burdett, David wrote:

>
> Howard
>
> You make very good points that I just about completely agree with. 
> However,
> at the end you ask ...
>
>>>> Is there anything in this abstract "choregraphy" space that is NOT a
> process, that cannot be "described" using process calculus?<<<
>
> I think that the answer to your question is quite possibly "no" and 
> that a
> pi-calculus approach would deliver the results we need. The way I 
> think we
> determine the answer to this question is by checking how well and 
> *simply*
> pi-calculus can meet the requirements.
>
> This makes me think that perhaps we are getting a bit too far ahead of
> ourselves and we should focus on the requirements of the solution and 
> in
> parallel give some of us folks who do not understand pi-calculus very 
> well,
> an opportunity to catch up.
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard N Smith [mailto:howard.smith@ontology.org]
> Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 7:07 AM
> To: public-ws-chor@w3.org
> Subject: Terminology - What is a process? Was: Internal processes 
> and/or
> external choreographies (was RE: Ev ents and States ...
>
>
>
> David,
>
> You made a couple of remark which I'd like to comment upon:
>
> You said:
>> 1. I don't think I would call it "process buyerSeller" as buyer and
> seller are roles and they can have more than one choreography between 
> them.
> I also like the word Choreography >rather than process (as you 
> describe),
> so perhaps a better name would be something like "Choreography
> orderManagement".
>
> and:
>> 2. Following on in the same theme, using "process seller" and "process
> buyer" is ambiguous as you will have more than one process at the 
> buyer and
> seller. So how about "process >acceptOrder" and "process placeOrder" 
> where
> each has a property that identifies the role which performs the process
> giving you: "process acceptOrder, role seller" and "proccess 
> placeOrder,
> role buyer".
>
> For the "process calculus people" in the group, everything is a 
> process,
> even the humble integer. (I think that was what Assaf just naturally 
> did).
> In the pi-calculus,
> everything is a process - formally. This group, and the industry at 
> large,
> may have started to use the word "choreography" but the term has no 
> basis
> in any
> previously published theory, and hence, everyone is using it and 
> defining
> it differently. Similarly, to process calculus people, the seller and 
> the
> buyer are
> also processes. In BPM as used in CSC, processes participate in 
> processes.
> The result is also a process.
>
> This "everything is a process" position that process calculus people 
> take
> is in fact quite real. It is the same position taken by object people 
> in
> object systems.
> CSC defines BPM as really a new technology, based on processes. It 
> depends
> upon implementations, which we call process virtual machines. The
> commonplace
> language we used in our book, BPM: The Third Wave, to explain this to 
> the
> world at large is to talk about "first class citizens" in computing. 
> Every
> technology
> has a conceptual center, sometimes defined very formally and sometimes 
> less
> so. To see what I mean here are a few first class citizens:
>
> - COBOL, the report
> - C, the pointer, function
> - Java, the object
> - EDI, the business element
> - XML, the tag
> - RDBMS, SQL, tuple, key
> - EAI, application interface
> - workflow, resource, task, case
>
> etc etc ... realise this is rough, but you get the idea ...
>
> The reason we identify the process as a new "first class citizen" is
> because in BPM process is not a byproduct of another stack of 
> technology,
> but the central entity around which all computation and communication
> occurs. This is what gives BPM its ability to manipulate process, as 
> RDBMS
> does relational data. It is what gives BPM its expressiveness in 
> defining
> sophisticated meta-process models that adhere to other process 
> semantics,
> for example:
>
> - project plans, schedules
> - B2B PIPs
> - workflow patterns, task allocation
> - collaboration patterns (votes, polls, committments etc)
> - supply chain models
> - other process languages
>
> It is what gives BPM it's completeness. What we have been looking for 
> at
> BPMI.org and CSC, is a new first class citizen that can express
> many of the others, so that we can manage them as processes. A question
> that comes to my mind is:
>
> - Is there anything in this abstract "choregraphy" space that is NOT a
> process, that cannot be "described" using process calculus?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Howard
>
>
> ---
>
> New Book - Business Process Management: The Third Wave
> www.bpm3.com
>
> Howard Smith/CSC/BPMI.org
> cell             +44 7711 594 494 (worldwide)
> home office +44 20 8660 1963
>
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Received on Monday, 14 April 2003 15:09:11 UTC