RE: Dubray paper comments + questions

Howard:

What is really useful in a SOA is to provide the ability to express some
rules which based on the process or collaboration instance context will
fire a given implementation of a service. This is a necessary decoupling
between the logical "activity" of a process definitions and the
"service" which implements this particular activity. There is a many to
many relationship between the service and activity. For instance a
global insurance company could decide to have a unified claim processing
process, but based on the context of the claim could fire localized
services.

The WfMC specification though dating back to the mid 90s offers a
particular instance of this concept with the notion of user/group/role
whereby a user can be chosen dynamically based on a business rule such
as "this activity has to be performed by a manager".

Passing dynamic locators is rather trivial and overly limited as it
requires that the business rule that fills out the locator is outside
the reach of the process definition. In this insurance example it means
that I will need a service that can generate the locators to select the
appropriate localized services. Does not sound good to me.

I am wondering why pi-calculus does not take into account such a simple
concept?

As an "experimentalist" (a non theorical physicist) by training I am
suspicious of "theories" as we often forget the context in which they
were developed. Physics offers countless examples of theories that
cannot be applied outside of their context of course, but also many
people that applied theories beyond their limits without any sanity
checks. 

All we hear is Assaf's interpretation of Pi-calculus theory in the
context of B2B/EAI/Workflow, you name it. I am sorry but I am not
impressed so far except by the amount of literature that Assaf has gone
through.

Jean-Jacques Dubray____________________
Chief Architect
Eigner  Precision Lifecycle Management
200 Fifth Avenue
Waltham, MA 02451
781-472-6317
jjd@eigner.com
www.eigner.com 
 
 

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: public-ws-chor-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-ws-chor-request@w3.org]
>>On Behalf Of Howard N Smith
>>Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 9:05 AM
>>To: public-ws-chor@w3.org
>>Subject: RE: Dubray paper comments + questions
>>
>>
>>Sometimes little comment give a lot of insight into what we are really
>>talking about:
>>
>>Arkin said:
>>
>> >I am, of course, a big advocate of the formal process model and in
>>particular one that allows this form of interaction when not all
>>participants are know in advance. I do that on a daily >basis when I
use
>>the Web or correspond through this mailing list (notice how your
e-mail
>>address was added to the CC by act of replying).
>>
>>What a wonderfully simply explanation of the power of the process
>>calculus.
>>The point is, greater minds than ours have set out these process
calculi
>>in order that we can express all other processes out there, without
which,
>>there would be parts of the world (and business) we could not
describe.
>>
>>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

Received on Thursday, 27 February 2003 09:41:07 UTC