Stop the Choreography Definition insanity!

I've been buried in the gajillion emails about choregraphy; heard proponents
of bpss, wscl, wsci, bpel4ws, and the expected "we don't need no stinking
yet another ws-* spec" speak up.  This is impossible for a reasonable person
to follow, and certainly for our soon to be bewildered AC reps.  I have a #
of proposals to help refine the process.

1. No more "imagine application x.  Message flows blah blah blah" messages.
I simply can't keep up with the restaurant ordering, POs, travel
reservations, etc.  Purposefully or accidentally, the myriad of proposals
prevents us from getting closure.  Let us use ONLY the travel agent usage
scenario as defined in the *gasp* W3C Web Services Usage Scenarios and Use
Cases document.  And if it needs additional steps/conditions added, then
suggest specific changes to the scenario.

2.  We need actual discussion of REQUIREMENTS, with proposed suggestions.
For example, I might have requirements: 1. Order of operations MUST be
expressible.  2.  Dependent Operations MAY be shown in public choreography.
3. Conditions MAY be exposable.   Therefore, I get something like .. foo ..

3. Use reasonable subject lines.  I suggest using the requirement (s).  For
example, if you don't believe in ordering of operations, then the subject
should reflect such.  Or dependent operations.  Or whatever, just not
"choreography definition".

4. Get real.  To be blunt, if this group decides that it wants to re-invent
choregraphy languages from ground up with n inputs, it will be a total waste
of time.  Simply put, a number of companies are not prepared to go through
the reinvent the wheel exercise again.  I can state for the record that BEA
Systems isn't interested in that.  Perhaps it's too much to ask of a
standards body, in such a short time, but we need to get to closure pretty
darned fast, and political realities have to reflect that.  And we're going
to have to find some way of dealing with the fact that some companies and
people - some of whom aren't w3c member companies - don't want choreography
done at the w3c at all, so not getting timely closure is a victory.  I have
every confidence that if choreography isn't standardized at the W3C, it will
happen somewhere else, with commensurately different IPR conditions, process
and influence over the result.  And BEA Systems also believes that only 1
choreography standard will survive.

Cheers,
Dave

Received on Monday, 21 October 2002 15:33:36 UTC