Hi, Lance mentioned before the need to agree on a deployment format for Ode, in short to answer to the question "what will I deploy in Ode?". Note that the question is 'what', not 'how' (yet). To start the debate I'll just drop some of the requirements I'd have, to see what you guys think.
First, we could support two types of deployment unit, just like any J2EE app server does: 1. A raw format with no prior compilation, generation whatsoever. The magic happens on deployment. 2. A compiled, validated, ready to use format. Upon deployment this thing is just opened, read and we're ready to go. For this first format, I think we just need a self containing archive, including not only the process representation but also wsdl, xsl, deployment descriptor, whatever... End of requirements. The second format should be compiled and validated. So most (if not all) possible errors in the original bpel description, the wsld or anything else should be detected during the step that produces this deployment unit. The compiled version of the process should be as close as possible to the definition model used at runtime (something like a pre-processed object tree). This two format wouldn't be exclusive, it's just 2 steps in the lifetime of our deployed package. This 2 steps can happen all at one time (1 -> 2 -> running) or one after another (1 -> 2 // 2 -> running). Thoughts? Comments? Criticisms? Flames? Matthieu.
