RE: eCommerce Choreography Use Case

 

-----Original Message-----
From: David Orchard [mailto:dorchard@bea.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 7:07 PM
To: 'Burdett, David'; 'WS Architecture (E-mail)'
Subject: RE: eCommerce Choreography Use Case


 
How about making the airline booking and/or hotel confirmation arrive from
the airline asynchronously?  Then they could arrive in various orders. 
 

The key point I got from David B.'s eCommerce use case was that the parties
had to understand the choreography, not just the MEP for discrete steps.
The shipping company had to get the order from the supplier, confirm it with
both the buyer and supplier, arrange a pickup and delivery schedule
acceptable to both the buyer and supplier, and presumably gets paid by the
supplier once delivery has been made.
 
The whole point of a travel agent (virtual or human) is to handle all these
messy n-party details.  The travel agent hides their choreography from the
traveller.  Well, if all goes well, it is hidden. I guess that when flights
get cancelled, or credit cards revoked, or travel plans change, then all
parties have to get involved, and that's where it gets ugly. (I still
haven't resolved a messy n-party dispute between me, my travel agent, credit
card company, and an airline for a trip that was supposed to take place on
Sep 12, 2001!). 
 
I actually think the eCommerce example is a cleaner use case for a shared
formal choreography description. The airline example needs a shared
choreography document when the going gets ugly, and as a practical matter
humans get involved whenever the going gets ugly. On the other hand, if
there were a choroegraphy for resolving n-way travel cancellation scenarios,
my computer could have talked to their computers and gotten this all handled
properly the first time, terrorists or no terrorists!
 
My [not wearing chair hat] suggestion is that it would be easier to
incorporate the eCommerce scenario than to tweak the airline scenario to get
the humans out of the picture and to show a use case for formal
choreography.