In my last article I hinted about investigating the use of an open source tool in support of my current employment.  I won’t go into details about the use case itself but I will gladly describe the tool and its potential.  First, a little background.

The Need

As noted in previous articles, a large part of my work the past several years has been in information management, specifically product and application configuration.  I’ve so far had the pleasure of leading and supporting work on two major enterprise rollouts of workflow solutions, each employing different commercial offerings and approaches to implementation.

The first project addressed a huge gap in product data and change management for consumer products development.  PTC Windchill was selected for the workflow solution based on its own strengths and helped by the fact that PTC product engineering applications were already in use.

The next project at a later employer involved replacing a claims handling application with a true process workflow solution.  Serena Business Mashup (SBM) was selected over competing products due to its rich feature set and seemingly unlimited extensibility.  I found the development environment (Mashup Composer) to be flexible, powerful and intuitive.

Both projects were very successful in streamlining and improving the ability of stakeholders to view end-to-end processes and manage events in their domains.  The commercial products involved proved their value although expenses were certainly significant.

An Open Alternative

In my current employment I am once again faced with the need to improve management of an enterprise activity, except that the prevailing economic decline prevents the sort of corporate funding that had been required for the other two projects.  This led me to search for low cost or even free solutions.

I found several tools that looked promising, but just about every search highlighted one in particular: the open source ProcessMaker.  Glowing write-ups such as this one by Python Developer’s Journal gave the impression that this free tool just might be close enough to WindChill or SBM to significantly improve our change management process.

The Short Take

ProcessMaker is 100% web-based and managed at popular open source hoster SourceForge.  The PM website states that its code “… is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3”.  It is provided in Windows and Linux versions.

I downloaded and installed the latest Windows version (1.2-2865) to my work laptop running XP.  The installation included MySQL and the Apache web server.  The first installation attempt hung up on the Apache portion at the end, but the second try went smoothly.  I’m not sure what happened (or didn’t happen) the first time.

I’ve barely explored what ProcessMaker can do and yet so far I am impressed.  While its mashups have not yet reached the number that one can access for Serena’s offerings, the same potential is there and hopefully the open source community is already at work developing more to be shared.  ProcessMaker supports Web Service Definition Language (WSDL), enabling a process developer to integrate numerous off-the-shelf applications that provide similar access.

The interface is clean and fairly easy to navigate.  However, I could see immediately that I’ll have to read the documentation and/or follow tutorials before being able to develop a useful process model.  Still, by sheer intuition alone I was able to create a new user, associate him with a group, install a sample weather report mashup and run the activity successfully.  This speaks well for the UI design.

I did find some minor but obvious phrasing issues in some areas, possibly reflecting ProcessMaker’s international heritage (Colosa has offices in New York, Bolivia and Peru and partners with a Danish IT firm) but they were not showstoppers.  Indeed, even in my untrained fumbling I did not run into anything that raised any real concerns.

ProcessMaker has recently brought data table creation and management to its set of features, bringing it closer to its commercial peers.  I’m eager to test this particular addition and see how it stacks up against Mashup Composer’s robust equivalent.

Bottom Line

 WindChill was the first purely Internet-architectured data management and collaboration tool, so by now (version 9.1) it’s very mature.  Too much time has passed since I worked with WindChill so I couldn’t do a post mortem justice.  I do recall that it easily handled everything we threw at it and integrated well with our other enterprise systems… SAP, BPCS et al.  It’s strictly a commercial offering.

Serena’s Business Mashup solution certainly has the power to wire together any silos across an enterprise landscape.  Serena has taken a hybrid approach in this space, offering a closed commercial product supported by a growing collection of popular user-developed mashups.

ProcessMaker, however, is completely free and open so that the developer community can create and push upstream additions and improvements not only to mashups but also the core product.  Colosa, the group behind ProcessMaker, charges only for training, hosting and other support.

There’s nothing wrong with PTC’s and Serena’s commercialization of course but lately I’m coming to believe more and more that ProcessMaker’s open mode is that of the future… assuming of course it reaches the critical mass necessary to attract enough mashup developers.  My initial take is that it definitely has the potential.

I plan to continue exploring that potential and expect to do at least one more general follow-up once I’m more familiar with the product… hopefully soon!

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Never take the road less known or travelled, never take a shortcut that you have never taken before and never travel with a stranger who you dont even know.  this is a horror/thriller that takes you to the edge of your seat and back again.  its like a slow starter but once it hits the wall then things really start to happen.

Its a cross between wrong turn and rest stop. it deals with the undead and the living and how the two should never cross paths.

In short boy likes girl, finds out that she is going home for the holidays and then makes up a flyer that he is going to the same place as her and offers a ride.  girls takes the bait only to realise that the driver is slightly off when asked questions and realises that maybe she made a mistake.  boy and girl then take a short cut that the gas owner had told them was a short cut.  only to end up smashed against a wall of snow and left to die in the middle of no where.  this is when the fun begins and you will have to watch it too see.

Spoofs are that they jump quite a lot from place to place and sometimes  you dont know whats really happening.

3.5/5
-priests (walking dead)

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During the PTC/USER meeting in Florida, week before last, PTC announced a new Windchill application – Windchill RequirementsLink.

As one of my key interests is Systems Engineering, and the press info was a bit sketchy, I had a follow on interview with Michael Distler, Director, PTC Windchill Solutions Marketing.

Basically, this application uses a document or input to the requirements, typically a Word doc. A user interacts with the application to “slice up” the document into individual requirements. Each requirement become a separate requirement and then can be “connected to” the part, assembly, or BOM which acts in fulfilling that requirement, almost seeming like a requirements BOM. Interestingly, additional data can be input that provides verification specifications also.

Reports generated from RequirementsLink allow users to check for traceability (which parts or assemblies are related to a requirement), for satisfaction of that requirement and whether any related verification tests have been performed and approved.

My reaction: This is a terrific capability for all engineers, one that is sorely needed by designers, managers, and quality personnel for sharing and collaborating on how requirements are met. Similar capabilities are also available with Siemens PLM Teamcenter and Dassault Systemes SmarTeam (soon to be part of Enovia). RequirementsLink provides a free viewer; the authoring version costs about $2000 per named user. PDMLink is a prerequisite.

None of the mentioned requirements software are yet technologically advanced enough to actually connect requirements to specification driven design. Nor can any actually examine the connected part automatically to determine whether the requirement has been satisfied. This may be a distant goal for future CAD systems.

Contact: www.ptc.com

Not taking on an issue yet, as the issues available are being fed to us by the news media, but taking on the news media. I can’t say for sure what it is I find so discouraging about the news, but I can definitely comment on what it is I hate about the way the weather is reported.



Back in olden times, say, twenty years ago, a guy named Paul was the famous weather man around here and he was pretty good at it. He was always out in his back yard, rain or shine, telling us whether it was raining or shining. He even regularly tried his hand at prognostication word… getting … too big. He even tried his hand at predicting the weather and what that crazy old man might be doing next.



Paul was as good at predicting the weather as anybody else, but he was also a likeable guy and he loved the science of weather. He tried to make the science of weather accessible to anyone who might be watching and he often shared with his viewers, tours of the war rooms, screen shots of the radar machines, formulas for calculating stuff like the wind chill factor.



The wind chill factor was some crazy formulistic equation that anyone who knew the current temperature and wind speed could figure out for themselves if they had the secret formula. And Paul the weatherman was only too happy to splain how to do it to anyone who asked and many did. I did not ask, but I assumed that many more would ask and that one day, I would finally ram it in my brain and I too, would know how to figure out the wind chill factor.



Nowadays, I don’t have to know what the temperature is or what the wind chill factor might be. And nowadays they got a thing called the heat index, but I don’t have to know anything about that either, because nowadays the weatherman doesn’t even tell you what the weather is. For some unholy reason, the weatherman has taken it upon himself to tell you how you are going to feel about the weather. They won’t even tell you what the temperature is, but what it feels like outside.



How is that the weather report? What in the world has happened?



For my part, I am the dumby who decided I did not need to pay attention when Paul was showing us how to figure out the wind chill factor. But even if I had paid attention, I would not be able to figure it out because the weatherman won’t tell me what the temperature is, how fast the wind is blowing, or where it’s coming from. Instead, the weatherman will only tell me how it feels outside. Well, what if he’s a sissy? What if he isn’t even telling us how it makes him feel, but what his sick old dad with arthritis thinks it feels like? Where’s the accountability?



Something terrible happened when I wasn’t paying attention to the weather and now I feel like it’s not even my weather anymore. But what is wrong with everyone else that I am the only one who is really upset about this? The weather sucks now and it’s because I never launched a campaign to fight the weatherman’s grandiose idea that he did not have to tell me the facts about the weather.



Now I am stuck with reports about how the weather makes the weatherman feel.



Is what’s going on with the news the same thing that went on with the weather?

Got some snow last night –
windchill below zero now –
way too cold to walk.

-36C windchill day in Halifax Harbour
Halifax, Nova Scotia
January 17, 2007

Contrasting with the hot summer forest fire from yesterday’s post is this shot of Halifax Harbour in winter on a day when it was -36C windchill. Halifax harbour is natural, carved out by glaciers from the last Ice Age, and hasn’t frozen in recent memory (mine goes 29 years now) because it is deep and has a decent ocean current going. However, when it gets cold enough, vapour start to rise and you get a fairly surreal effect. This might have been a lava field with all the grey and smoke from it. The ferries on it makes it a more interesting shot because the ferries obviously wouldn’t belong on a lava field. It’s not a terribly interesting shot otherwise except maybe to those who live here and knows they rarely see the harbour in this condition.

I saw the shots the morning that day and committed to take half a day off work to get outside and freeze my butt off for these shots. I meant it, too. Sure, lots of places get colder, but when you don’t have the attire for that cold temperature, it’s freakin’ freezin’! I got this shot and some others from the MacDonald Bridge over the harbour, but had to make excursions from where people collected tolls. Basically, I ran out for 2 minutes to get over the water, shot for 1 minute, then ran back for 2 more before warming up for 10 minutes or more. I did this for close to 2 hours. The stupid things I do for photography! I stay in when it’s -15C windchill out with respect to running, as a veteran of 24 marathons now!

See more photos from Halifax Harbour in -36C windchill on January 17, 2007.

Look — look how many days it’s been since I last wrote!! I can’t believe my absence. I can’t believe my lack of inspiration. It’s convinced me — suddenly I realize this — that a great deal of my inspiration came from the blogs I read and from those who read me — and because I haven’t been spending time on blogs or with those who read me, I’ve dried up.

I find it sad that I, a person of so many words and thoughts and emotions, and who finds such deep fulfillment in writing, has all but abandoned blogging and reading blogs and writing. I’d say that while I was doing those things, when I worked from home, I felt more balanced. Everyone needs some sort of outlet, and this was it for me.

I think I simply have to start reading again. Reading blogs, and my own words, even, and setting aside time to write. When I get home from work, I find myself unable to do much at all (which I think is because at work I’m multi-tasking beyond belief doing stuff for three practitioners, and squeezing so much into relatively so little time). It’s almost as though I fall into a vegetative state when I get home. Odd: I think most people fall into a vegetative state AT work, and then awake when they arrive home!

How on earth did I find so much to say when I barely left the house? After such an eventful year, too, I feel as though all I tell people now is that nothing much is happening. Really, who wants to read about the new down coat I bought after searching forever, or my daily driving to and from work, the B12 shots I’ve started getting, or the completely agreeable and pleasant experiences I have every day with patients? These patients are nothing like the colourful patrons I encountered at the library when I worked there! (Thank God.)

Maybe when I start getting Reiki sessions at work, I’ll have something interesting to reveal.

Even EditQuest has been unfortunately abandoned, though a couple of days ago I finally revisited and did some cleaning up on the site and also was able to find the RSS torch again, which had disappeared before the new year. Somehow, the code was pointing to someone else’s site, and I guess it was no longer active. The only thing to do now is get the subscribe part working again. Rather irritating, all this. The good part about it all is I’m learning how to deal with code and design. And once all that’s up and running again, I’ll revisit my guide to getting published. Because it’s taken me so long to do, I’m thinking of not charging for it, though I do think it will be worth something when it’s finished.

In the meantime, pizza and movies await me.

Bundle up, eh, and keep your stick on the ice!

Happy weekend!

Wow!  What a difference!  It is like 10 degrees out, and we have a windchill below zero.

Needless to say, me and the kids will NOT be leaving the house for any reason until things warm up.

Sorry that I haven’t posted much.  I have been distracted by technology…I got a new laptop and a blackberry….I am a happy little girl.  I just need to figure out how Vista works…..It’s a lot different.

The kids are fine, toddling around.  By the way, since they waddle and then crash, why don’t we call them crashers rather than toddlers???

They were both awake at 5 am with the hubby, but after a quick diaper change and a bottle, they were back out until 8 am.  It was nice to wake up on my own….

The teething continues….poor Melissa….three molars at once.

And just for fun…here is a picture of the family right after the kid’s haircut…all of a sudden they look like kids, not babies….sniffle sniffle….I miss those cute little immobile bundles that we brought home from the NICU….

new haircuts for the monsters

Minus twelve windchill
at the moment — furnace works
hard to keep us warm.

Artic Blast!

The skies are blue crystal today and the air hurts to breathe. But it being my day-off, I have big big plans. A 1 p.m. meeting with my employer to discuss my new”status as full-time. Off to the YMCA for some indoor exercise and followed by a few quick photos of Superior. Maybe even visit the chiropractor and drop by the bank.

Challenge, transportation. Mike, kindly lent me the Blazer as my car is still not completed.

Problem, dead battery on Blazer.

Call bus station for ride to 1 p.m. meeting, needing the door-to-door service. No more bookings today. Will the regular scheduled bus routes take me near my meeting? No.

Reshuffle plans to work-out after dinner and impromptu phone conference with boss.

Sigh.

Call shop, when will my truck be done?

@!!#$**&! ( I replied) After hanging up the phone.

Hello Mr. and Mrs. Internet and all the PC’s I see.  Prof Pod is back working the blog on the Internet machine.

This coming week in the Northern / Eastern US it will turn very cold, approximately zero Fahrenheit.  At this point is is dangerous to go outside.  As anyone who has spent any time outside knows when the wind blows it feels colder.  

Slate  has a nice discussion on windchill.  I will say that I do not agree that wind chill is not useful.  When trying to dress in the day it matters between low positive numbers and mid teens below zero.  Most people living in the American South will say that anything below 60 is cold.  

Humans love to label.  We name everything we can.  In the Bible, one of the first things stated is that man named everything.  Now I believe the Bible is written by man so that means that a man stated one of the important item is to label everything.  When it is asked how cold will it be the answer about 5 but it will feel much colder is not an answer most Americans like.  We like number and exacting precision.

If for the psychological good feeling wind-chill is needed.

Until next time then.

Don’t let them steal your brain! Think for yourself!