by Marc
9. December 2006 01:18
As the song goes.
You can catch debate elsewhere about
when to use WF and whento use BizTalk.
Decison making around this might also be a little more subtle than a simple platform
choice in a given organisational and architectural context and of course,
both might be useful. Consider an architecture that has several BIG applications
for the enterprise like SAP for finance, or CRM or revenue capture systems. These
systems may comprise the 'enterprise services' for an organisation. Now there is very
likely going to be a bunch of Line of Business applications sitting above these giant
vessels handling business processes for specific divisions. On top of that will then
be a bunch of user interfaces that may have a 1:1 relationship with the LOB apps,
but possibly represent several systems combined, or vice versa.
So where could WF and BTS sit in this architecture? Well maybe the following places
to the strengths of both technologies:
>
So perhaps the enterprise applications can be orchestrated using BTS, and made
accessible through access to BTS orchestrations representing the layer of available
enterprise services. Meanwhile in the Line Of Business applications, WF can be used
as the business logic layer handling process flows, communication, business rule validation
(and of course access to the enterprise services). At the top, then the user interfaces
could also be assisted by WF for screen navigation control and/or the use of the rules
engine to provide upfront validation.
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