There seems to have been an assumption that there should only be one
orchestration/BPEL/workflow engine in the Ode project. So far I seem
to be MrNegative repeatedly doubting whether this assumption is valid
or useful so I just wanted to get feedback on peoples thoughts on
this specific issue, particularly from the Sybase/PXE folks.
Here's my personal take:
Right now today the Sybase code is geared more towards being a
generic orchestration/workflow engine that today supports BPEL 1.1
and can support other orchestration/workflow languages and could be
ported to 2.0 without huge amounts of effort. PXE is specifically
geared towards BPEL 2.0 as its primary design which could well be a
good thing if you want a BPEL 2.0 engine - though I do find the PXE
code harder go grok - but maybe that's because its more BPEL 2.0
specific.
In summary they are both very different, solving things in different
ways - I see value in both codebases as they are today. I also see
areas they can collaborate (as PaulB mentioned recently). So we can
definitely have code reuse across the two engines. However I honestly
have no idea if we can ever merge the two codebases into one - the
experiment has some merit for sure but it could be too big a leap.
Putting that ServiceMix hat on again; we certainly have a use case for
* a general purpose orchestration engine that we can use from Java code
* BPEL 1.1
* BPEL 2.0
* any new XML language that comes out in the orchestration/workflow
space
So both engines have immediate value to ServiceMix.
Putting that Ode hat on again, my personal priorities on the ODE
project are are to get both engines working well in their new Apache
home, then looking to where we can reuse code & infrastructure across
the two. But unifying the code into one engine isn't on my personal
list of itches to scratch (and I've lots of itches :). I'm perfectly
happy for them to stay separate and let reuse happen iteratively over
time.
Specifically to Sybase & PXE folks, what are your thoughts?
James
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