porges

Has no one told the people behind the Workflow Management Coalition that April Fool’s passed over two weeks ago?

Intrigued at what I first thought was a joke, I downloaded one of the proudly-presented documents on the front page: Understanding the BPMN-XPDL-BPEL value chain. I chose it because of the three as-yet-unknown acronyms in the title… and I wasn’t disappointed.

I present you with the following gem, lifted from one paragraph of the article:

Several BPM engines are able to run XPDL natively, which allows run-time modification and process migration to be readily supported. Where these processes focus on broader-scope collaboration among people, they can remain within XPDL/BPMN. Where pieces are decomposed into system-to-system interactions, these can be translated to BPEL for transmission to an EAI-oriented BPM engine. These are three very different and very compatible roles. But that’s the nature of the value chain—BPEL and XPDL are entirely different things for entirely different purposes.

I suppose the warning sign should have been their slogan:

Process Thought Leadership™