Saturday  2002-09-07   Web of Services

Business process management overview - part 2

Another good paper on this topic is "Web services and business process management" by Frank Leymann, Dirk Roller and Marc-Thomas Schmidt, all well known experts of workflow. First two authors are co-authors of BPEL4WS spec as well.

Monday  2002-08-19   Software

Making software useful for people

As noted in Contours we are far from making software truly useful for normal users.

The Mac may have some chance of becoming a platform good enough to allow non-techie users to really mold the environment. Musicians and graphic artists don't count. I mean normal users. I'm afraid I'm not optimistic, but it is good to see some ferment.

Why the pessimism? Perhaps the shallow response to the death of Kristen Nygaard. I was amazed at the number of C++ developers who belive they are following in the footsteps of a man who changed the course of computer science so shipyard workers could participate in software design. (I realize that the dialog on Apple scripting is at a higher level.) How many developers are focused on how to involve the people who must live with software systems? It seems to me that instead of debating the merits of various scripting languages, a comparison of the ability of domain experts and stakeholders to interact with systems built with the contenders.

In the 1970's, Kristen was an early advocate of user participation in industrial systems design. His social research into the impacts of new technology on workers influenced landmark union-management agreements and legislation, in Norway and other countries.

Saturday  2002-08-17   Software

Separation of content and presentation

An XML guru comes clean: "Separating Content from Presentation: Easier Said Than Done". What is suprising about this admission is that it is even necessary at all. By some accident of history, "separation of content and presentation" has become a credo, a motto, a religion.

Let's remind ourselves that it is nothing but an abstraction, a tool for clear thinking and better solution.

Sunday  2002-08-11   Development

From JPEG to abstract algebra

A couple of demonstrations of modern functional programming by Jeroen Fokker:

"Functional Specification of the JPEG algorithm, and an Implementation for Free"

"Explaining Algebraic Theory with Functional Programs"

Monday  2002-08-05   Policy, Process, Mechanism

Everything's explained in SOP

In many organizations, the design process still follows a classical "military" model. A small number of "officers" do the "noble" task of analysis and design, plan the overall work load, and assign implementations and test tasks to the "simple soldiers." This way of working has several drawbacks.
...
But today, even the military no longer works like this, at least in the British SAS or American SEALS and probably other elite military forces as well. ... Most interesting to us is the account of the mission design. After being given a broad view on the mission objective [...] all eight members of the SAS patrol meet to cooperatively design the details of their mission (what, when, where, how, and with which tools). They do not start from scratch but instead identify the problems to be solved and their contexts, and then borrow and customize solutions from the Standard Operational Procedures (SOP) handbook: for example, get to this point behind enemy lines with enough food and ammunition for the mission and without anybody else being aware or have a cover story ready in case of a capture). The very same eight men then "implement" their design, being fully aware of all the implications. The bottom line of this approach is that these special forces consistently rate from five to ten times better than classical ones--and military efficiency measures, albeit somehow macabre, do exist.

[The benifits of this approach are:]

... The most striking point is the team's reliance on patterns of organization and behavior for the big picture and on SOP for the implementation details. These patterns are used as small building blocks that everyone knows and understands: The design activity can proceed at a quite high level, in terms of patterns instead of implementation details. ...

Another interesting point is that, because those who design the mission are also the ones who implement it, they tend to come up with implementable designs and realistic schedules. ...

Finally, because all of the implementers are responsible for the design, a strong team spirit is created to make the implementation possible. ...

From "Design Patterns and Contracts" by Jezequel, Train, Mingins (ISBN 0201309599)

Thursday  2002-08-01   Software

Scholarly duties of the humble programmer

From EWD archive

Like most of us, Edsger has always believed it a scientist's duty to maintain a lively correspondence with his scientific colleagues. To a greater extent than most of us, he has put that conviction into practice. For the last four decades, he has been mailing copies of his consecutively numbered technical notes, trip reports, insightful observations, and pungent commentaries, known collectively as "EWDs", to several dozen recipients in academia and industry. Thanks to the ubiquity of the photocopier and the wide interest in Edsger's writings, the informal circulation of many of the EWDs eventually reached into the thousands.

A few random picks:

• "The humble programmer"
• "How do we tell truths that might hurt?"
• "What Computing Science is about"

A sad update: Dijkstra passed away on 2002-08-06

Wednesday  2002-07-31   Web of Services

"f r e e" or "f e e"? - value of letter R

Aptly named blog "The End of Free: for-fee online business models, subscriptions, web applications, content sites" is so far thankfully free.