Symphonies, orchestration, and choreography
Monday, March 29, 2010
2:25 PM
Symphonies, orchestration, and choreography
Think of a business as a symphony to be performed. 
To perform it, you need some form of orchestration as to who does what. 
Alternatively, you can conceive of your business process as choreography: define interactions rather than sequences. 
The use of orchestration versus choreography is a huge controversy; 
Orchestration: big infrastructure (e.g., IBM Websphere) has global knowledge. 
Choreography: little infrastructure (e.g., mashups) function from local knowledge. 
I am on the choreography side in this controversy! 
Suggested Readings: 
[link] 
[link] 
Primer on WS-BPEL: [link] 
[link] 
Primer on WS-CDL: [link] 
And, for a really controversial view: 
[link] 