It is going to look like I am collecting the whole SOA-library of Packt Publishing. Not because of any commercial interest or benefit, but because I discovered that their collection is very appealing to me as an IT-architect who realizes that practice is always about the "dirty details" (which I often used to call the "golden details" to our developers).
How do you create an SOA that is driven by business processes? Use BPMN and BPEL is what Matjaz Juric and Kapil Pant evangelize in their book "Business Process Driven SOA - using BPMN and BPEL" where they explain how to get from business process modeling to orchestration and service oriented architecture.
This book starts from a business process perspective and explains how business processes and IT relate. The authors explain why SOA is needed and why we should believe this. They recognize business aspects, technical aspects, and organization aspects in an SOA approach. They continue in explaining how SOA and BPM relate and why it makes a perfect fit for the business process lifecycle.
After these academic exercises they dive into the world of BPMN and the BPEL. BPMN is a formal notation language to define process flows and BPEL is the resulting code to be processed by a process engine. Flow charts and screen shots are used to illustrate the ideas.
My heart opened when I saw back the principal ideas of structured programming. It proved that the authors know how algorithms should be designed. My advice to them is to introduce Nassi-Shneidermann diagrams in the next edition of the book.
The book is highly recommended for the next generation enterprise developers who are going to build enterprise-scale software systems in the context of service oriented architecture. However, one must be aware of the fact that BPMN and BPEL is not the holy grail. Without a technical mapping from the models explained in this book to hard-coded software modules, custom made or commercial off-the-shelf, based on service-contract interfaces, the whole idea of BPMN and BPEL will be not much more than a theoretical concept that can't be implemented or deployed in the real life IT-landscape.
[Click the picture for details]
Posts
6 comments:
Thanks for your review.... very useful indeed ...
I have bought this book recently and agree with you. A good read all the way and very enlightening.
-Daniel
Your observations are very much in line with my own review of the book (which can be found at: http://www.enterpriseagility.dk/?p=27)
While the book has some limitations, it is a great read for those inclined to combine BPM and SOA.
Lars
For those who are interested in a BPMN modeling tool that enables the generation of ready-to-deploy BPEL, please check eClarus web site (http://www.eclarus.com).
We also published a technical paper on the technical issues of mapping between BPMN and BPEL and our solution - http://www.eclarus.com/resources/BPMN_BPEL_Mapping.pdf
-Hong-Lee
Thanks for your comments on my book. Appreciate your inputs.
Best Regards,
Kapil Pant
Hello ...
I am a faithful follower of this blog so interesting ... Business is my life ... For this reason I always keep looking for informed articles, magazines and news about her subject. This helps me to be every day a better businessman and my business so keep updated
Stacy H.
The advantage of using a channel management software it that it can lessen the time spent in managing the partners and concentrate more on other business processes there is.
Post a Comment