deltalounge » BPM

Some thoughts on SOA Governance and BPM

PeterPaul — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:22:16 +0000

Although I didn’t attend the Burton Group Catalyst Conference in Prague this week, I was able to get a glimpse using twitter and some blogs. My main focus was on the Life after SOA: Next Generation Application Architecture track. In this post I’ll share some quotes and thoughts with you.

SOA Governance

On governance I like this quote from Anne Thomas Manes:

If you can’t manage and govern your services with a wiki, a registry/repository won’t help you, either.

This goes great with the statement that I’ve put on this blog before that it is not about the tool it is about people and process. Besides that managing a Service Repository also isn’t a Silver Bullet either, it has proven to be very useful for some of our customers.

BPM

Here are some quotes from Mike Rollings on BPM:

Too much focus on business process automation is detrimental to your BPM initiative.

Automation helps reduce human effort, but fixating on automation gets in the way of optimizing the business.

Automation can be an enabler for optimization, however it should never get in it’s way of become some kind of burden. Yes software can help, but software is a means to (process) optimization not an end or a goal.

So far, I am not sure where I stand on the following quote from Anne Thomas Manes:

BPM infrastructure tools: process modeling tool is key. But models are not to be created to generate code.

On one side I’ve worked with tools that generate good code from models. At the same time I’ve worked with analyst and other functional people that do not have the skills to create a model that will result in great software. Please share your thoughts on the subject in the comments!

SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2 notes and blogs

PeterPaul — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:49:56 +0000

In the blogpost on the release of SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2, I mentioned a link to the documentation index. Since it hasn’t been update by now, I suggest you go to the middleware documentation page. This page is more up to date and has the link to the web library and download address (Alert! approx. 860 MB) of E14571-01 – the Fusion Middleware Online Documentation Library 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.3.0).

SOA Suite 11gR1 PS2 installation notes

Besides the reference in the documentation library to the Install Guide and the Quick Install Guide, there are several blogs describing the installation of 11.1.1.3. Which is actually a patch on 11.1.1.2:

This post by Oracle ACE Eric Elzinga;
The installation steps described by Theo van Arem;
Installation of 11g PatchSet 2 on Windows by Niall Commiskey, members or Oracle PTS in EMEA;
The one on Oracle blogs by James Taylor includes OSB 11.1.1.3

SOA Suite on Amazon EC2

This week it was announced that BPM 11g R1 is available as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). This AMI includes SOA Suite 11gR1 Patchset 2 and JDeveloper with the SOA and BPM extension. In AWS filter on 64-bit and put soa-bpm in the search box. This should enable you to find oracle-soa-bpm-11gr1-ps2-4.1-pub. Some of the tips I posted on x SOA Suite in the cloud could be useful here as well.

SOA Symposium 2010 Call For Presentations

PeterPaul — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:29:10 +0000

On October 5 and 6 2010 the worlds largest SOA and Cloud Computing event will be held in Berlin; the SOA Symposium. The International SOA and Cloud Symposium brings together lessons learned and emerging topics from SOA and Cloud projects, practitioners and experts.

There is a call for presentations:

The SOA and Cloud Symposium 2010 program committees invite submissions on all topics related to SOA and Cloud, including but not limited to those listed in the preceding track descriptions. While contributions from consultants and vendors are appreciated, product demonstrations or vendor showcases will not be accepted.

All submissions must be received no later than June 30, 2010. An overview of the tracks can be found here. Other resources:

My blogpost of the SOA Symposium 2009.
Presentations from 2009.

Installing the Oracle Business Process Repository

PeterPaul — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:09:45 +0000

To work with the Oracle Business Process Analysis Suite 11g (BPA) as a team, you need a central repository. This post will give you a quick insight in the installation steps of the Oracle Business Process Repository, as the repository for the BPA Suite is called. The complete installation and administration guide can be found here (as PDF). Turn to paragraph 2.4 if you’re installing on Windows of 2.5 if your installing on Unix/Linux.

Installation steps

Create a database with the AL32UTF8 character set.
Create two tablespaces ARISDATA and ARISINDEX using automatic, unlimited growth. Make sure there is a temporary tablespace called TEMP or alter the SET DL_TS_TEMP=TEMP. If you choose other names alter the SET DL_TS_DATA=ARISDATA and SET DL_TS_INDEX=ARISINDEX in the envset.bat or envset.sh. The envset file can be found in the \Setups\DBMS\Oracle of the V17759-01_2of2 DVD.

Alter the envset.bat file to reflect the settings of your database:

REM The path 2 sqlplus.exe 
SET DL_ORA_BIN_PATH=
 
SET TARGET_HOST=localhost
SET TARGET_PORT=1521
SET TARGET_SERVICE_NAME=ARIS

Run the envset.bat (or .sh) and install.bat (or .sh) from the \Setups\DBMS\Oracle directory of the V17759-01_2of2 DVD.
Run the setup.exe from the \Setups\Windows\Business Process Repository directory of the V17759-01_2of2 DVD. Choose the options to install with an existing repository
Choose to run as a Windows service of you’re on MS Windows.

Some jBPM, JPA, Hibernate insights

PeterPaul — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:57:04 +0000

jBPM

Few days ago a colleague published an interesting blogpost on jBPM, JPA, and Hibernate. The post was noticed by Tom Baeyens, who until late March 2010 was the project lead for jBPM at JBoss.
Of course JBoss restates their commitment to advancing the jBPM project, but it will be very interesting to see what will come from Tom Baeyens’s new initiative…

IDS Scheer BPA tool leader

PeterPaul — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:17:50 +0000

Magic Quadrant BPA tools 2010

Few days ago Gartner published it’s Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis tools. ARIS is one of the most comprehensive enterprise and BP architecture toolsets on the market, with strong support for a wide variety of standards, methods and frameworks.

IDS Scheer OEMed ARIS to both SAP and Oracle. Oracle and SAP use ARIS as the EA and BPA modeling tool. This will probably be continued even now that Software AG has acquired IDS Scheer. This acquisition can introduce a period of organization and product integration. Gartner suggests that customers monitor the situation.

ARIS Express

Earlier IDS Scheer has released ARIS Express, as free BPM software product to the market. Gartner sees the Express product as a lightweight BPA product for low maturity or occasional use. It can be used for commercial use and has an upgrade path to ARIS professional products. A great product for anyone starting on the BPM track.

Software AG acquires IDS Scheer

PeterPaul — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:13:35 +0000

Only two years after acquiring webMethods, Software AG has announced it wants to acquire IDS Scheer. IDS Scheer has a great name in the BPM as well as the Enterprise Architecture (EA) market. Their strong global brand will enabled Software AG to grow it’s name in these markets.

Oracle has based it’s BPA Suite on the ARIS Design platform. From now on Oracle has to rely on a competitor to augment the process modeling capability functionality of their suite of products in the BPM arena. This puts the Oracle BPM 11g and BPA Suite 11g Partner Community Launch in a slightly different perspective.

One of the most insightful blog posts on this subject so far comes from Forrester. This, like other sources, states that “Software AG has agreed to treat ARIS as a separate entity, with its own roadmap and strategic direction“. Actually good news for ARIS customers, and continuity of the ARIS Design platform.