| [soa-pmc] Separate BPM and SOA. |
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Hi all, I have started reading the soa-pmc mailing-list a very few weeks ago, but I've followed what happens in the BPM and SOA landscape at Eclipse for the last few years. I have some experience on both SOA and BPM, and I'd like to start a debate here that I hope will lead to conclusions that will make easier for people to consume BPM and/or SOA. In my opinion, this is a confusing idea to have one top-level SOA project that provides pure-BPM things. BPM and SOA are different things, either in term of goal, expectations, and technologies. People can use BPM without SOA, people can use SOA without BPM. Of course there are some integrations that are possible, but the coupling is not strong enough to merge SOA and BPM at Eclipse. Having BPM components in the SOA projects make people believe that BPM is part of a SOA. That's wrong. For BPM, SOA simply means that your BPM engine and tools will be able to consume services. Your BPM can also read data in Databases, then you have the same coupling between BPM and SOA@Eclipse than between BPM and DataTools. DataTools does not contain BPM stuff. BPM is wide, SOA is even wider, but there is no strong coupling between both. Integrations are possible, but not necessary. Maybe it would be more relevant to have a BPM top-level project at Eclipse independently of SOA, and some projects that would provide some interactions, on top of both BPM and SOA. That are my 2 cents. |