Yes, I understand that the SAF proposal doesn’t borrow IT technology from the medical field, just terms and concepts. What’s an occasional cheap shot between friends?

“I also think that if there is one area from which we don’t want to learn in terms of automation, system integration and proper use of IT in general, it’s the medical field”

while I agree that the analogy should not be pushed too far, the point is NOT to borrow IT management ideas from the medical field (that’s just naive inference)! Simply to borrow the language as it is easily understood and maps naturally to what SAF is supposed to be doing.

Stu, why do you think generating BPEL processes is half-crazy (just curious for justification, mind you ). One of the points I think is this decoupling of the generic framework from the context/domain specific “rules” set. But SAF is not merely a rules-based system.

It does work to some degree when used in a problem management context but lets be honest here most organizations are still at stage one – incident management. Problem analysis is largely adhoc in terms of process, products and people.

At the end most want tools that “don’t have me think” hence the need for all those large RED and GREEN circle dashboards that cost an arm and leg and provide very little value outside of narrow cases.

The problem primarily is, of course, that prescription processes are highly context-dependent, and so while these systems can be “OK” at simple detection and diagnosis, automated resolution is unlikely until you can find ways to build a more contextual-aware prescription. They recognize this with the split between “Protocol” and “Prescription”, though I’m curious as to how they intend to implement it, short of generating BPEL processes at runtime. Which is only half-crazy.