- From: Jean-Jacques Dubray <jjd@eigner.com>
- Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 09:40:11 -0500
- To: "'Howard N Smith'" <howard.smith@ontology.org>, <public-ws-chor@w3.org>
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