Java Process Servers Good idea or not?

Question

I just want to shout out the community to find out what people think on the Java process servers in general.

In particular, IBM tends to make a lot of noise about the Websphere process server. I see the idea of ​​process servers if you work in the world of web services, but in practice are they really effective or are they just crowded?

BPEL is another closely related technology that tends to get a lot of hype from IBM, but I have not yet seen an implementation in real life.

General thoughts are welcome.

Answer 1

Some projects / companies have complex business processes that include many services, applications, human interactions, for which the use of the BPM mechanism, its connectors, modeling tools can be justified. But this is clearly not for everyone.

Now, to use the IBM Process Server, you need a license, you need an application server to deploy it (by chance, WebSphere), some (IBM) machines, maybe some expensive connectors, some licenses for modeling tools, etc. Therefore, I am not surprised that IBM is making noise about it (even if in fact it is not), the sale of such a solution should be very good for them (not to mention the consultations that they will add to the account).

And BPEL, which is a standardized language for describing threads as a sequence of services that consume or create XML messages, i.e. The generalization of BPM through XML and web services is another brick that allows you to push SOA a bit further by serving marketing soup. So, again, there is nothing surprising in the fact that software vendors are trying to promote it.

Conceptually, I do not think that BPM, BPEL, etc. - bad ideas. But, as I said, they are not for everyone. If they do not solve anything for you, then using them would be a bad idea. But this does not necessarily make them invalid as concepts.

Answer 2

IBM currently offers several offers.

The acquisition of Lombardi and WPS heritage are not combined as IBM's business process manager. There is also FileNet BPM, available from IBM, which focuses on document-oriented BPM solutions.

The Lombardi stack uses BPMN efficiently, while WPS uses BPEL as an orchecstration mechanism.

The IBM / Oracle camp chose the BPEL path, while others, such as Appian, Lombardi, Pega, etc., came from using BPMN as the execution model for the business process.

Both of them are widely used and have a valid reason for existence.

NTN

Manglu