Usually I have a definite opinion about what a BPMN construct means, and whether some diagram fragment is valid or not. Here I used to have an opinion, but now I'm not sure. I'm hoping a reader will set me straight. The issue is an intermediate event (e.g., message or timer) "floating" in a process or expanded subprocess alongside the regular flow, the one bounded by start and end events. The floating event has a sequence flow out, leading eventually to end event, but no sequence flow in.
[My November column on BPMInstitute.org] Nobody really cares about standards? until suddenly they do. When a standard reaches some threshold of adoption, a tipping point is reached. Then, if you?re not on the standard you?re proprietary. Legacy. A dinosaur. Not where you want to be. By this time next year we may see that tipping point for one piece of the BPM standards puzzle with a potential domino effect on the other pieces as well.
One of the main reasons I went to OMG Think Tank was to hear a detailed discussion of the two BPMN 2.0 proposals on the table, and the roadmap for adoption. But guess what? Not a single word about it on the agenda. Unbelievable. Heckuva job, Program Committee! Nevertheless I was able to get a feel for where things stand by talking to some of the protagonists. To review, there are two competing submissions.
Anyone interested in the history of BPM technology (brief as it is) should not miss Ismael Ghalimi's recounting of it, "Why All This Matters." As a seminal figure in that history, his discussion of the relationship between BPMN and BPEL, the two important standards in BPM, is especially notable. Neither standard is perfect. But while BPMN has succeeded in the BPMS world in spite of its shortcomings, BPEL's shortcomings have largely confined it to the SOA/integration space, where "
This is a continuation of my review of the IBM et al BPMN 2.0 submission to OMG. The biggest change from BPMN 1.x in the orchestration notation is in the area of event handling. It's mostly positive, but still obviously a work in progress with some very rough edges. One major enhancement is my favorite wish list item, the non-aborting attached event. The proposal provides this for timer, message, conditional (rule), signal, and a new one - escalation - that is a variant of the error event, i.
This post is the third in a series of comments on the BPMN 2.0 submission by IBM et al to OMG. For me, process model portability is such an obvious goal of a notation standard like BPMN that it almost goes without saying. But we cannot take it for granted, because since BPMN 1.0 in 2004 the standard has not even provided an XML schema for the serialization. BPMN 2.0 was supposed to address this issue head-on at last.
At Oracle Open World yesterday, industry analysts got a good look at Oracle's BPM strategy and roadmap in the wake of the BEA acquisition. Overall, my conclusion is Oracle is showing the rest of the world the right way to do software acquisitions. BPM is progressing along the path of "interoperate, integrate, unify" that Oracle claims it tries to follow with all of its acquisitions. Before the BEA deal there was the Oracle BPM solution comprised of SOA Suite (in particular BPEL Process Manager) and BPA Suite (rebranded ARIS with a BPEL roundtripping extension), and there was BEA's AquaLogic BPM.
If you're a regular reader, you've probably figured out that my BPMessentials BPMN training is pretty hard core. We hammer on the semantics of the various shapes and symbols, the need to validate diagrams and fix the errors, and we provide a methodology for organizing diagrams for maximum shared understanding - across business units, and between business and IT. Most people taking it have at least some previous experience in process modeling, and live in that twilight zone between business and IT.
On the plane home from Think Tank I had a chance to read Derek Miers and Steve White's book, "BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide." Unlike Packt, the publisher here spammed me endlessly with solicitations to buy but never offered a review copy. I was prepared to plunk down the $40 in Chicago, but Derek just gave me a copy. Which was smart, because now I have to review it. Derek and I compete in the BPMN training business, so I was hoping the book would be good, but not too good.
Packt Publishing sent me a copy of "Process Driven SOA Using BPMN and BPEL" by Juric and Pant, and on the plane to OMG's BPM Think Tank I had a chance to review it. In addition to the usual boilerplate about BPM and SOA, the book promises to show how to do roundtrip engineering between BPMN and BPEL. This would be a useful thing to explain. BPMN-BPEL mapping is a bit of a square peg in a round hole, but tricks and workarounds do exist, and showing how to modify arbitrary BPMN to be roundtrippable with BPEL is an interesting topic.
