Messaging and workflow

Dub's has continued his thoughts on workflow and extended on my post around messaging (aren't blogs great!) and simplified my thoughts into an easy to read summary.

However I don't agree with his comments on HR-XML being the "new" model and savior to our messaging needs. (Again a great thing about blogs is we can all express our opinion and push forward to a combined understanding.) While HR-XML is going in the right direction the latest specifications are getting very very complex.

The other area where I disagree is XML is not always synchronous, look at RSS. It is through the implementation of web services (which communicate in XML) that we get a synchronous environment. XML (even HR-XML) by itself does not get us there. I do understand that Dub's is trying to simplify things and many of the XML implementations are synchronous however it would be wrong to assume that if your vendor says things are in XML format that you have a synchronous messaging environment.

Personally I don't see that we need synchronous messaging to fully exploit agent based computing, however it does help. A combination of synchronous and asynchronous messages overlaid with an effective workflow engine that automates forms processing will provide significant benefits to an HR department.

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