Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Will the real composite app please stand up

In trying to get to grips with what is meant by a composite application I came across this blog entry from Jeff Calow of IBM. He writes that the usual definitions of composite applications all deal with automation, but then asks about the user interface aspects. I would like to extend this and assert that a composite application consists of three optional aspects:
  • A user interface which brings together in one place everything the user needs to carry out a task. This could be a portal or a scripted front end as found in many mashups . Rich clients are another possibility.
  • A business process execution environment that not only handles the automation of processes, but also deals with user centric aspects such as workflow and screenflow.
  • An integration infrastructure that allows data to be transformed from one format to another.

IMHO any self respecting composite application framework should support all three aspects.

1 comment:

Alastair Bathgate said...

Andrew

Just discovered your blog - a most interesing read.
I work for a company that may (or may not) have a composite app. I have also been confused by the various views of composite app definition.
There seem to be different types depending on whether the process being automated is a user interactive one or STP.
We have noticed a trend towards the latter recently. This requires a runtime harness of some sort for bulk running of processes. In the STP context I would argue that your "business process execution environment" might also need to consider logging, MI, and exception handling.
Anyway I would be very interested in your views!