Reviews for Business Process Driven SOA Using BPMN & BPEL

1. Poorly presented

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2010

   I agree with the other reviewers - a good intellectual effort from a BPMN perspective but too many mistakes throughout, including on diagrams which reduces one's confidence in the accuracy and consistency of the core material. No comment to make on BPEL or SOA, as my interest was limited to BPMN.

2. Good intro to BPMN & SOA

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, July 12st, 2009

   I must agree fully with Lars Hansen on his review. This book gives a very good introduction to BPMN, BPEL and SOA. I have approached this book from a business perspective unlike Lars who has approached it from an acedemic perspective. We are embarking on a global systems project and have chosen to adopt BPMN to model our business processes and SOA as our architectural paradigm. For this purpose, this book answered many questions. However, the promotion of the Oracle product became rather irritating. I understand that this approach was probably used for illustrative purposes but if the intention is to publish a quality book, examples of other tools are necessary.
   
   Aside from this, the most annoying aspect of this book are the countless grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. I would have expected a much higher quality of English. The authors are not to blame as I can see that English is not their native tongue. However, the numourous editors, proof readers and reviewers associated with this publication (approx. 10) have been found wanting. All it takes is a professional native language translator for the language you wish to publish in. Clearly, this was not done and has made for a very unpleasant read.
   

3. Great read, but too stuck on Oracle tools.

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2009

   The Good:
   
   The book shines when it describes the relationship between BPM and SOA, and how concepts such as the Business Process Life-cycle, Business Activity Monitoring and Business Rules fits into this equation. The book also delivers a thorough description of BPMN and BPEL. In general, I found the book to be well-written and an easy read.
   
   The Bad:
   
   The primary complaint about this book is the heavy toolset bia; if you're not an Oracle shop, then you might find the emphasis on Oracle products problematic. I read the book from a more academic perspective, and to be honest I mostly browsed the most Oracle-centric parts of the book. So I believe that non-Oracle readers will find less value in the book.
   
   Overall:
   
   I have mixed emotions about this book. On one hand, the authors clearly have a firm grasp on the relationship between BPM and SOA, and they are able to articulate this vision in a clear and coherent way. The book also contains a fine introduction to BPMN and BPEL. There is clearly a need in this space, so props should be given for this.
   
   On the other hand, the Oracle emphasis gets a bit out of hand - especially as the book is not called "Process Driven SOA for Oracle" or something like that. It is with this context in mind, that I think spending as much as one third of the book on Oracle stuff is too much.
   
   So if you are in an Oracle shop looking for material on BPM and SOA, then by all means buy this book. If not, then you might want to be a bit more cautious. But given the scarcity of literature in this area, you really might have difficulties finding something better.
   
   4 stars - and let me just say that I was a bit gentle with this rating.