[news.eclipse.modeling.mdt] Re: [Announce] BPMN2 component proposal

[hmalphettes@xxxxxxxxxxx (Hugues Malphettes)]

Kenn,

Thanks for your answer.

Relationship with the OMG regarding on a non-drafted specification.
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I agree that it is best for the community to have a voice before those
specifications are finalized:after all we are the one who end-up
having to support them !

However regarding the OMG, this happens when the specification is
available as a draft release. At this point the community is welcome
to influence something that it can review.
If there is a need to involve non-OMG members outside of the OMG
processes before that, then it is up to the OMG to change their
process.
I don't see an eclipse-project being productive in that area.

In fact last year at eclipsecon the relationship of Eclipse and the
OMG was discussed:
http://www.eclipsecon.org/summiteurope2006/presentations/ESE2006-EclipseModelingSymposium14_OMGStandards.pdf
> From what I understand these discussions are still going on.
The symposium between eclipse and the OMG will certainly help.
Maybe once we know more in that area, the relevance of a specific project 
to deal with the OMG's own process will be clearer.


BPMN-metamodel and STP-BPMN modeler.
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The original goal of the project was to get out of the door a BPMN
modeler for the eclipse community.
Let's note that the 1.0 and 1.1 specs do not enforce a particular format, 
there is no xml-schema, no ecore, no serialization format, no namespaces.
We chose to have a core-semantic model that does not enforce the whole
specification by itself.
This way we are able to support on the top of it the rest of the
specification and in fact several versions of the specification.
We also make sure that people interested in using parts of the
specification only can use the modeler as the base to their product.

So for example we decided that the properties are not hard-coded in
the meta-model.
Instead they are supported as annotations.
We chose also to support all activities and event-shape with the 
combination of a single element and an attribute 'activityType'. This is 
because it saves 10s of classes and that simplifies enormously the 
complexity of the generated modeler.

We are aware that we are not supporting the entire BPMN-1.0 spec.
We are answering to the community to that regard.

When BPMN-2.0 will be drafted accessible publicly we are expecting the
community starting with my own employer to push us to support it.


This brings me to the most important point: starting another BPMN
effort outside of the existing STP-BPMN project will certainly confuse
our community and freeze the adoption.

This tentative target release is June 2009.
In the mean time:
Should people wait for this other effort to go somewhere? Is the
STP-BPMN modeler compliant to the standard (answer: yes BPMN-1.0 and
soon 1.1 minus the bugs)?
Are you ready to discuss with all potential contributors are users
what standard is implemented what version of it and its actual
availability to the public?
By doing this effort in the existing project we will make sure we
don't spend energy clarifying this.

Thanks!
Hugues.