Business Mashups already are process aware

Today I read a post by ebiz blogger Keith Harrison-Broninski about Mashups and process. He took a look at mashups from two perspectives represented by mashup tool vendors JackBe and NexaWeb.

(As an aside, do you think JackBe allowed him to evlauate their tool? Readers will remember that JackBe declined to let me evaluate Presto, as I've noted here and here.)

I'm in the middle of evaluating Dapper, and so far I really like what I see. I had to take time out to respond to Harrison-Broninski, however, because while I agree with most of what he says, I have to take exception to his conclusion.

Here is the money quote from his post.

...there are essentially 2 types of mashup: siloed and process-aware. For now, mashup tools are siloed. However, in due course they will become process-aware via integration with HIMS technology - and once this happens, the combination of [Human Interaction Management System] HIMS processes and mashup applications will be an extremely powerful way to leverage both Web 2.0 and your legacy infrastructure.

I'm very confused by this post because we've been saying for months that true business mashups are not only human-process aware, they are human-process centric. Mashing up the data is a great step forward. Mashing up visual and data elements at the glass is a very interesting technique, perhaps more relevant to the consumer world than the business world, but a useful technique nonetheless. However, these aren't business mashups. They are presentation and data mashups.

So what?

Hinchcliffe noted in a recent and widely cited post that there aren't yet killer mashup apps. I believe that's because we've concentrated only on putting the data and presentation components together and haven't put the results in the context of a business activity. I go into more detail in my response to Hinchcliffe, so I won't repeat myself here. The bottom line is that Harrison-Broninski has it exactly right about the need for human-centric process.

What he doesn't have right is his assertion that there are no process-aware mashup tools. He notes that BPM is a possibility, but thinks processes appropriate for BPM aren't really appropriate for mashups. Read his post for his perspective on the difference between BPM processes and HIMS processes. I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion since there are BPM vendors who have strong roots in human workflow. In fact, Forrester has an entire wave for Human-centric BPM. (I'd include a summary here, but then Forrester would insist on approving my post.)

Instead, I think the reason BPM tools haven't invaded the mashup market is because BPM practitioners haven't yet made the connection. (See my post on the subject.) Until that happens the tools won't evolve to make it easy to create mashup applications within a BPM context. I'm sure that will change, but for now read the comments from long-time BPM practitioner Sandy Kemsley.

Until the BPM tools do evolve, I'd like to point out that there are at least two process-aware mashup tools already on the market. The first is ActiveGrid, which I've already reviewed. The second is Serena Mashup Composer which has been released to the public this week. Both of these tools let users create mashup applications, and both enable mashers to define human workflow to put the mashups in the context of a business activity.

Go read Harrison-Broninski's post for an interesting discussion about the difference between BPM and human-centric applications. He makes a great case for mashups of the future incorporating HIMS. But don't think you have to wait for 'the future' for a business mashup construction environment. To steal the title of a very old movie shamelessly stolen in many, many marketing taglines, "The future is now."

Have fun with Mashup Composer, JackBe

I'm not one to hold a grudge. Hey, when JackBe said I couldn't download and try their software, I understood. I didn't like it, but I understood.

But let's play fair here.

Someone from JackBe has downloaded Serena Mashup Composer. If I were Fake Steve I might have a field day talking about how, now that they've had a chance to dig into Composer, JackBe must be crying like a girl. If I were Fake Steve I would be suggesting that the JackBe employee is actually getting ready for a job interview with Serena, and that's why he/she downloaded the software. If I were Fake Steve I might even suggest that this is JackBe's way of writing requirements for their next release. "Hey R&D, forget the requirements doc. Just make Presto do what Serena Mashups can do."

I'm not Fake Steve, so I wouldn't say any of these things.

I will say this, however. Presto and Serena Mashups solve different problems. Do you need your data mashed? Presto likely is a good choice. I wouldn't know for sure because I haven't been able to test it, but so I'm told and so I suspect based on the Presto marketing materials. Do you need this mashed data within the context of a business activity? Well, Serena Mashups may be the right way to make use of this mashed data.

The point is that JackBe and Serena should be partners, not competitors.

So JackBe, we've shown you ours. Will you show us yours?

ActiveGrid is useful for web-based application building, but like so many mashup tools, you've got to have a fair amount of technical know-how

You'll notice from the title that I'm going to review ActiveGrid by WaveMaker. I wanted to review either Denodo, JackBe or AlchemyPoint by Orchestr8, but both Denodo and JackBe declined to allow me to evaluate their software, and Orchestr8 needs to publish some more documentation before I can do a good evaluation.

Why couldn't I test drive Denodo or JackBe?

Denodo declined because they sell enterprise middleware that requires some hand-holding to install and understand. They don't allow web downloads at all, let alone downloads by potential competitors. They did offer me the chance to participate in a directed demo, but having been in the software business for a long time, I just don't trust demos. I need to dig in and get my hands dirty. I want to thank them for making the offer, however.

JackBe was more straightforward. Serena is a competitor, and they aren't knowingly going to hand over their software to someone who could have malicious intent. That would be me, I suppose.

Fair enough. I'll just have to sign up under a different email address and company name and get my hands on it that way. Perhaps I'll use my Second Life avatar. Better watch out for a download request from Chuck Malibu, JackBe. (Note: This is a joke. I would never do such a thing, even to support my blogging habit.)

So while I can't talk to you about Donodo, JackBe or AlchemyPoint, I can talk to you about a surprisingly interesting web application building tool called ActiveGrid. WaveMaker is the company name, although as little as a week ago the company name was ActiveGrid, just like the product name. I'm not quite sure why they changed their name, but as long as they didn't change the tools, this review should still be accurate.

What is ActiveGrid?
ActiveGrid advertises itself as a Web 2.0 platform (who doesn't?) allowing non-technical or business-oriented people to build their own AJAX-based RIAs and mashups. Some of that is true, and some is a bit of a stretch. It's true that you don't need a lot of technical know-how to build data-based applications with highly interactive AJAX-driven interfaces, although some familiarity with the workings of a DBMS is necessary. When I started to build mashups, well that required a bit more technical know-how, which I'll talk about later.

ActiveGrid's application model is based on a database with a web front-end driven by a BPEL process engine. It reminds me strongly of the old Access-driven applications we built back in the 80s and 90s. Start with a database, add some user interfaces and some Visual Basic to manage the business logic, and there you have it, a home-built application. Of course, ActiveGrid is quite a bit more sophisticated.

I used ActiveGrid to build an application that used the various RSS feeds and REST interfaces I defined in OpenKapow. (See my earlier post.) It was easy to assemble the screens as long as I used the defaults. They do a fairly good job of putting the widgets, data fields, etc. on the display in a visually pleasing way. They have a small selection of style sheets which were adequate. Of course, just as with QEDWiki, you can use your own style sheets.

Building ActiveGrid Web Pages is a Mixed Bag
I liked a lot of the page-building features. Selecting service fields to use on a page was quite easy. I didn't need to map the fields to page elements, ActiveGrid did all that for me. One very nice feature allowed me to take individual pages I created and, using AJAX techniques, quickly aggregate them into a single page. I liked that a lot.

Some things I didn't like about the page builder. What I want, and what most web-based application page building tools provide, is a visual modeling tool with a drag and drop interface allowing me quickly to mock-up the page. That's not how GUI development works in ActiveGrid. Setting up page formats reminded me strongly of the way we built XWindows/Motif interfaces back in the day. Trust me, it was tedious and time consuming.

BPEL for Page Orchestration and an Intuitive Event Model
ActiveGrid use BPEL for page orchestration, which is an interesting although unorthodox choice for an interactive application. BPEL is usually associated with the WS-* stack for web service orchestrations, not with human workflow. They've done a good job of making it work by unifying their service model. Everything is a service. A call to a RSS feed is equivalent to a SOAP call is equivalent to script is equivalent to a database call. It's an interesting approach and one that works well. I found their event model, which they use to control page flow, to be easy to understand and easy to use. They only have synchronous events, but that's a small price to pay for simplicity. BPEL supports asynchronous events, so perhaps they will them in the future.

For Mashups, Better Get Some Expert Help
Now let's talk about building mashups. ActiveGrid absolutely qualifies as a tool for building business mashups. They aggregate data and visual elements into a unified end-user experience within a process-centric framework. However, just because it is a business mashup tool, it doesn't follow that ActiveGrid is a tool for business mashers. In fact, I'd say that ActiveGrid requires quite a bit of technical savvy to create mashups. More savvy than we can expect from your average business analyst-turned-masher.

As I've hinted earlier, you can call many types of services from within ActiveGrid. A call to an RSS feed is equivalent to a SOAP call is equivalent to a database query. From my perspective as a business masher, I agree with this approach. Why should I care whether my service is REST, SOAP, RSS, POX or just a database call. Admittedly, I need to know the type of service when I import it, but after that it's just inputs and outputs.

But, and this is a huge 'but,' when it comes time to aggregate these services so they can be used to present a common interface, we come to a real problem area: Field mapping and parameter passing. I can only say that field mapping and parameter passing within ActiveGrid, well, sucks. It's likely not their fault. I don't know any application builder, especially one based on BPEL, that does a good job with field mapping and parameter passing. When I had to pass parameters into a service call, it took me quite a while to figure out how to do it. In fact, simply following the steps in their 'getting started' application to pass a parameter from one page to another was confusing and took me several tries before I understood what they were doing.

Let's just say that ActiveGrid didn't seem to take a lot of trouble to hide the complexity of the BPEL field mapping monstrosity from their end-users. No graphical drag and drop, no suggested mappings. Not even pop-up help so you could read the help and look at the interface at the same time. Just a lot of steps to define input variables, output variables and a really bad interface to define the logic that associates the two together.

Yuck.

Botom Line
Business mashers can use ActiveGrid to build web-based applications quickly and easily. With some understanding of how databases work, it's quite simple to build highly interactive and appealing applications. When you want to turn them into mashups, however, you'd better get some serious help from your applications development organization because it's neither quick nor easy.