In this interview Alec Sharp, an expert on modeling, discusses the importance of modeling, particularly Business Process Modeling and BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) to app development. Sharp says that although building complex models can be contradictory to what Agile is about, building simple models is not. Sharp also refers to BPMN as a “visual programming language.”
Alfresco has just released version 5.0 GA of the Activiti engine, an Apache2 licensed BPMN 2.0 implementation. InfoQ talked with project lead Tom Baeyens on the new release. Tom is also the creator and former project lead for the jBPM project.
Open Source Software vendor, WSO2, released last month a comprehensive Eclipse-based development environment for its middleware platform. The tool simplifies the development, test and deployment of services, mediation flows and google gadgets.
A new book by Mauricio "Salaboy" Salatino, the jBPM Developer Guide, provides a detailed jBPM programming guide for Java developers with several real-life examples. InfoQ spoke with Salatino to learn the motivations behind the book and learn from his experience both using and writing about the jBPM Business Process Management suite.
Java SOA Cookbook, by Eben Hewitt, covers Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) from a Java implementation stand-point. In the book, Eben discusses SOA model basics, tools and best practices. SOA Governance and Enterprise Service Bus are also discussed.
Paul Downey discusses the risks of premature standardisation, unnatural constraints, partial implementations and open extensions, how to avoid cloud computing lock-in, formal activities versus lightweight open processes as exemplified by open source, Microformats, OpenID, OAuth and other Web conventions being ratified through open, lightweight, continuous agreement.
In this presentation, Google architect Gregor Hohpe introduces various concepts for to manage more complex interactions between services, including conversations, choreography, and orchestration. He provides a down-to-earth look at these concepts along with the associated Web services standards like WS-BPEL and WS-CDL, and identifies common patterns in service conversation.
Stefan Tilkov discusses REST (Representational State Transfer) and RESTful web services based upon work he has done for clients of his consultancy. Stefan talks about the shortcomings of the WS-* specs and says he sees little need for WS-* web services any more. Stefan also talks about how web development frameworks are beginning to map to the RESTful model, and the concept of REST and security.
In this interview, recorded at QCon London, Google architect Gregor Hohpe talks to Stefan Tilkov about his new work on conversation patterns. Building upon his earlier work on enterprise integration patterns, Gregor sees conversation patterns as playing a critical role in real-world interactions, with analogies in the natural world.
Composite Software offers a new level of granularity when compared to SaaS (Software as a Service). Composite Software is about enabling "right-sourcing", i.e. move (or keep) arbitrary small or large elements of functionality wherever it is the most cost effective to operate them, not just entire systems. Economically, "right-sourcing" is far more efficient than "outsourcing" and SaaS. The goal of this book is start by understanding today’s software construction processes and technologies and explore why and how it should be evolved to support core composition mechanisms.
