Hi, my name is Leo. I graduated a couple of months ago with a Bachelors in Computer Science. Using an application to build another application is mind boggling. It’s one thing to use APEX from Oracle. It’s another when my friend tells me about Business Process Excellence and directs me to SoftwareAG’s site I’ve barely spent 10 minutes and I’m already curious. From what I gather, your forum is divided by sections based on applications that use this concept. After getting a good night’s sleep I plan on probing the site to fully understand what, how, and why should I find myself the nearest training center for this
I have a question I’d like to ask. Didn’t know if I should put it in the wiki section since that section is for the already existing articles.
Unless I’m mistaken, the idea behind this technology is that instead of writing code, you just need to analyze the system and understand how it works. Like when someone walks in and says “Hi I’d like to open an account in your bank”. That’s a registration function. It goes through a series of steps. So basically the “programmer” needs to understand what these steps are and “insert” them into one of the solutions available at SoftwareAG following some business rules and the solution will present you with the application.
My question is this: How do you present this information to the “programmer”? For example, what I’m accustomed to is drawing a data flow diagram, sequence diagrams, ER, and so on. Then it’s only a matter of translating the drawing into code. So how does it work here? In what format should I present this information to the programmer? Do I just make a typical powerpoint presentation where each slide has a function and a 123 step by step? Or is there some ‘special’ format that I should follow? There are several presentation tools; online and offline, that people use. Not just your typical PowerPoint solution. I’m asking if there’s any specific app for presenting information to the programmer that’s using adabas for instance.
If there is no specific presentation tool, how about the format of the information? How do I turn the endless presentation that a customer gives me about his application into a format that an adabas user can understand and use?
I would also like to welcome you, Leo, to the Software AG message boards. That’s quite a topic to make a splash here with. Perhaps I don’t understand the question you ask as well as Desislava, but to me, I am not certain you are asking specifically about Adabas or BPM, though as was said we do have different forum categories depending on the nature of the topic.
Are you asking about a specific standard for providing business requirements to the programmer/analyst? If so, as far as I know, there are as many standards as there are IT shops, and mostly it relies on having several requirements gathering sessions between IT and the business to understand the scope and nature of the project request, which then leads to a technical design being created to fulfill the requirements, and then finally user acceptance of the delivered solution prior to cutover. Several stages of stakeholder approval are required along that path.
At the minimum, the requirements and design should be verbal descriptions, so Word documents, Power Point presentations, etc, are all useful communication tools to describe the business needs. Entity relationship diagrams and other charts you learned in school are valuable for describing the technical implementation. Perhaps where you were going with this is in terms of business process flow and standard representations of that… and I am sure several do exist and are utilized by BPM products. Several standards have arisen around business process diagramming, and the use of tools may determine which standard of representation you use. Software AG / webMethods highly regards use of standards to be as open as possible since they are not tied to a specific application or hardware.
As Desislava said, it may be best if you have more questions on BPM to post in the BPM forum where you will find more knowledgeable folks in that area, but hopefully this helped explain some of the non-BPM specific topics surrounding the communication of business requirements to programmers.
Thank you both for the welcome. Brian, I’m looking for exactly that. Delivering client requirements in forms that softwareAG product will understand.
I apolgoize about my first post. I was looking for ways to present data gathered from a client to my friend. I really was confused after going through several pages of softwareag.com and ended up confusing everyone
So ya, at first I was asking how do i present requirements to people. I decided to keep it simple. Powerpoint.
Now I can better explain my problem. I found several solutions in softwarAG. I chose NaturalONE. I’m building an internet application and frankly, naturalone’s preview description was the only one that mentioned webservices. I’m happy with this choice especially when I’m familiar with Java. So naturalONE is the way to go for me. I already downloaded the trial version and will move on to looking at tutorials soon as I’m done with this reply
Here’s my problem. I spent enough time with the client to write a book! I have all the requirements. I know what the client wants. I know what happens to every document that enters my client’s office. At this point, I’d usually draw a whole bunch of diagrams like DFD, statechart, ER, sequence, and so on. Once I’m done, I pick the suitable language for this project and start coding. But based on the vague description that I heard about business process excellence, a product like naturalONE doesn’t follow the same style. The information I gathered from the client is to be turned into some format that NaturalONE will understand and it will write the code for me and build the system. This is my problem. Getting started.
I hope that this long post is better than the previous one Thank you both again for hte welcome and I look forward to your reply.
I am intrigued. I hope to find out how this all works out in the end.
I am not sure if you are starting from scratch here or if your project involves tying together a business process that uses some existing services and whether those are internal, purchased or to be acquired. I do know at least some of your services you need are going to be developed in-house, and that you believe NaturalONE can be that desired language for developing services. I think you made an excellent choice!
If you are starting from scratch, I would use the BPM layer to map out the client’s desired process, and I would use the Software AG webMethods product to represent this. When you get your client’s buy-in for the overall process flow, then use NaturalONE to code each service that you need to develop in-house as a stand-alone service. If you have services available already for some of these processes, that is great too!
The nice thing about BPM is that you can define a manual process that later becomes an automated process, and the same hold for services; you can replace one service with a better one without disrupting the overall process.
as i mentioned in another post, i’ll b answering here since my work with naturalone is over until someone tells me otherwise.
Ok so i did some reading after naturalone. the ARIS platform seems to b yet another right choice. through it i use business processes and rules to get my executable code or execution application. frankly im not sure what the difference is but basically, it’s what i’ve been looking for all along. but i didnt no the diff between the explanation offered for business process and uml designers which are part of the ARIS platform. i left a msg at WE LOVE BPM blog which has gone unanswered. so i decided to download the prg and wing it. turns out the app needs a license. totaly forgot. so thts gone too. then i found ARIS express. downloaded it. will start working today but frankly im not sure how to proceed
when i found ARIS, i understood what bpm is. i still dont no how rules are made or come to play. i found some tutorials via softwareag and google for bpm notation. so there are two models im after. business processes and bpm. these are available in the express version. im going to try out both and see which one gives me what i want. im guessing both will? i dont no -__- well teh weekend is officially over in the US so im going to give their call center a call and ask for one of their technicians to give me a 5 minute lecture and guide me where i need to go. it’s been too long T-T
i need more examples for bpmn and finding out how to make or derive business rules. at least im getting there. closer to what i want. but it’s been slow
This is especially so since it sounds like you are focusing on the ARIS & webMethods BPM arena to start with and will fill in the service development part later. They also can give you more help on your question about standards concerning BP flow and supported standards for importation into the Software AG product set.
thank you. but may i ask why ur recommending a webMethods section instead of the ARIS section? there is no trial version and the bussiness process excellence cycle says that i move to webMethods bmps in the implementation stage. i think im still at the design stage which according to the cycle, involves the ARIS platform or in my case, ARIS express? anyways i’ll post there. u’v been good to me so far
I’ve barely spent 10 minutes and I’m already curious. From what I gather, your forum is divided by sections based on applications that use this concept. After getting a good night’s sleep I plan on probing the site to fully understand what, how, and why should I find myself the nearest training center for this 
Perhaps I don’t understand the question you ask as well as Desislava, but to me, I am not certain you are asking specifically about Adabas or BPM, though as was said we do have different forum categories depending on the nature of the topic.