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You might have seen the recent news reports about the collision between U.S. and Russian communication satellites. The U.S. satellite was one of the Iridium satellites. What wasn’t reported and you probably don’t know is that an object database management system (ODBMS) is an important part of the Iridium system. Even though ODBMSs are a bit off-topic for this blog, it is a technology with which I’ve been involved since the late 1980s. So, I’m adding some technical detail to this story.

The Iridium system includes over 66 low-earth-orbit satellites. That low orbit makes it possible to use low-power devices with a small antenna on Earth (satellite phones). Low orbit also means that Iridium satellites orbit the earth in less than 90 minutes. So during a typical telephone conversation, messages must be dynamically rerouted from one satellite to another. The Objectivity/DB ODBMS is used in the Iridium base stations for the message routing as well as network management. The developers described the Iridium switching problem as the equivalent to re-configuring an ATM switch every 4 minutes.

My understanding is that the part of the Iridium system that uses Objectivity/DB had nothing to do with the collision. Nevertheless, as it turns out, a new system is in the works to manage collision avoidance in space that uses Objectivity/DB as well. It is the Space High Accuracy Catalog (SHAC) project that will be deployed by Lockheed and used by the Joint Space Operations Center at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The new system will provide improved collision avoidance and real-time tracking of hundreds of thousands of objects and debris in space. The goal is that decisions about spacecraft placement and collision avoidance can be made in seconds, rather than hours or days.

I am now also posting on the Cutter Blog. My initial posting is (The Acronym) SOA is (Perhaps) Dead (at Some Companies); Long Live Services. It is a response to Anne Thomas Manes’ SOA is Dead; Long Live Services on her blog at the Burton Group.

I recently received two new books on business process modeling. Both books looked interesting because they had great titles. As it turns out, one book is great and the other not so good.

The not so good book is Business Process Driven SOA using BPMN and BPEL by Matjaz B. Juric and Kapil Pant. There are several issues I have with all three topics mentioned in the title this book. First, the treatment of SOA is very surface and completely leaves out both SOAP and  REST. I realize that a book like this one has a lot of ground to cover and cannot go into detail on all topics. Nevertheless, since the authors  mention WSDL, it seems to me that they should have mentioned SOAP and REST as well — and worked both into their BPEL examples. Second, there are errors in the BPMN used throughout the book as documented by Bruce Silver. See Bruce’s review for a description of those errors. Third, the BPMN to BPEL mapping — which is nearly 20 percent of the book — is really just a tutorial on an Oracle tool. Nearly as much space is devoted at the end of the book to orchestration, again demonstrated by an Oracle tool. I have no issue with Oracle. My issue is that the tool tutorial gets in the way of the clearly describing the basic concepts that need to be covered. The reader would have been better served, for example, with a framework on how to evaluate such tools.

The other book is BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide by Stephen A. White and Derek Meirs. This is a very readable book that is, as the title indicates, a reference guide. It is an easy, yet excellent, introduction to BPMN. Nevertheless, as a reference guide, it does not contain anything on methodology.

So, I am interested the criteria for a well-formed business process diagram or a technique for business process decomposition. I have a fair number of books on business process modeling, but they fall short in these two areas. For example,  the first book reviewed does provide some guidelines (or rules as they are called in the book) for a well-formed business process diagram:

• Process models should provide aid in process understanding. Aim for a minimum of four, and a maximum of fifteen tasks in a process. Aim for a maximum of three or four levels in a hierarchy.
• Match each split with a join.
• Have a well-defined start and end event.
• Look out for orphan tasks.

This relatively surface set of guidelines is not uncommon in the books I have. (Maybe I have just purchased the wrong books.) To take my point a bit further, the first bullet above mentions a hierarchy which references the decomposition of processes into sub-processes and tasks. I have yet to find a book or a Web site that provides useful guidelines on how to decompose processes and a measurable definition of an atomic task or process (one that cannot be further decomposed). So, if you know of any books or Web sites, please post them in a comment or contact me.

The lack of decomposition guidelines was part of my motivation to create this Web site. The other part of my motivation was that I knew of an algebra for design decomposition and could see how it could applied to business processes. Nevertheless, I am open to ways that I might be able to enhance the decomposition provided by the Decomposition Matrix on this site.