06/01/08 :: [SOA] Full Circle [permalink]
I'd be curious to know what the SOA thought leaders are going to talk about in 2015. It sounds like the only constant is the lack of imagination. Today, Dave Linthicum asked "Is BPEL irrelevant?". Dave how many times did you ask this question in the last 5 years?
Dave argues:
in many instances BPEL is just shelfware
now get this, all wrapped in one convenient paragraph.
Core issues with BPEL include the fact that it is very synchronous in its approach and has a few programmer-level issues including limitations around request/reply exchanges in a heterogeneous architecture, exception handling, failure recover, multi-programming model support, and a few other issues which I view as minor. However, what's core to the issue with BPEL is that it's not very good at adding a human as part of the process and as SOA moves forward, I'm finding that composites and workflows are more applicable than simple service binding and extending. Moreover, there is not a lot of BPEL on-demand, and many SOAs are heading the way of the Web, or Web Oriented Architecture (WOA).
"Very synchronous", he says. I think Dave means it is not "event driven" enough. As a matter of fact if a resource lifecycle reaches a particular state, BPEL is not equipped to emit a message event. Yes, that could be improved.
Some clarification on the other points would be helpful, so I'll on the comments. I do love the "multi-programming model support" issue. For the readers who don't get it, here is a tip: it's a lot clearer when you take the square root of this statement.
My favorite is as usual the "BPEL is ... not very good at adding a human as part of the process". Just as if BPEL had anything to do with humans.
Now, I have explained many times, there is an emerging inter-action oriented, asynchronous, peer-to-peer programming model that is relying on concepts such as resources, assemblies, bi-directional interfaces, orchestration. It's actually quite elegant, it solves in one big scoop all the endless discussions that we are having, REST, BPEL, BPMN, "a process is a service", SOA RM ... I am no Roy Fielding (by far) by I did spend quite a bit of time last summer to write a book about it. Strangely enough no one came on that turf. You would think someone would think that it is quite insane that all these discussions are so rough, that all these technologies don't quite fit. You could think that programming concepts invented 40 years, don't apply in a connected world.
You could think on the other hand with all these discussions gone all these people would have nothing to do. You would think that having a better ROI to build solutions in IT would not hurt that much.
I know, you are thinking that this guy is about to throw a conspiracy theory. Well I wish, then we could uncover it. No I think the truth is a lot simpler. It is best summarized (as always) by Calvin telling Hobbes a few years ago:
