Irv,
We are also interested in a BPEL like approach to combining web services from within Cocoon, although for a different reason than yours, and with different requirements. In our case, the web services are text analysis tools, provided as SOAP services by various text analysis researchers. We are using the Cocoon portal engine as a central access point to the tools (through SOAP). The tools are written in many different programming languages, with many different native interfaces and installation requirements. The portal therefore does away with the need to install, configure, and to some extent, understand how to interact with the tools.
The portal also acts as a 'workbench' for working with the tools, allowing the end user to combine text analysis tools in novel ways, to record the results of their combinations (and thereby effectively create a 'new' tool that is the combination of other web services - i.e., dynamically generate BPEL), graph results (actually just another tool), compare results, and so on. We therefore need a means to record new tool combinations (BPEL), and a corresponding means to invoke the tool combinations.
From your post, your needs appear somewhat different than ours, but I mention our project just in case there is some opportunity to work together, or in case someone else is doing similar work who would like to collaborate. The project is led by Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) and is called TAPoR (Text Analysis Portal fOr Research - www.tapor.ca). Our company, Open Sky Solutions, has been contracted to build the portal, which is ultimately to be released as open source. We also hope to make some significant contributions to Cocoon along the way.
James
_____________
James Chartrand
Open Sky Solutions, Unit 2, 17 Paradise Road South, Hamilton, ON, Canada, L8S 1S1
905-523-9120 905-523-0768 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.openskysolutions.ca
On 27-Jan-05, at 4:17 PM, Irv Salisbury III wrote:
Daniel Fagerstrom wrote:
Irv Salisbury III wrote:
I didn't mean to offend anyone. I have answered a number of questions, and me and my company have given a few things to both cocoon and xreporter. I realize you weren't accusing me, but wanted to point that out. I certainly am not looking for any free hand outs. Cocoon is a very busy list, and trying to monitor both the users and dev list is very difficult. I did for a long time and couldn't do both. As having used cocoon for quite awhile, I really do want to help, but I felt I had to pick between helping users or helping dev.
Your point is well taken and I will join the dev list so I don't have to post in that way again. On the other hand, the users list has become so busy that more "dev" questions like mine go unanswered. (Which is where I started and received no help, forcing me to begrudingly ask for the dev help)
Excelent that you contribute to the user list, I didn't know as you didn't tell that you allready had tried in there. Anyway don't worry, except for me, people are nice and friendly around here ;) Furthermore as tech junkies we mainly care about if the questions are interesting, and your was.
It seem to me that you good answers later in the thread, so I don't think I have anything to add to that.
/Daniel
I did get great answers. One of the "hot" things a lot of our customers are looking at now is orchestrating web services together. Separating major pieces of the app behind REST style web services and then tying that together with things like BPEL. That is really where my question was driven at. I guess it would be interesting to see if there was any thought about integrating BPEL into cocoon. Kind of like a "flowscript" but in XML, but that could call cocoon pipelines, massage their content and string together reusable smaller pipelines. That was where my difficulty lies. I have a series of small, reusable pipelines, but that take XML in and return XML. So, I need to "orchestrate that". A key piece to this would be an architecture that let XML come into each internal cocoon call.
Anyway, thanks to all!
Irv
