[LRUG] State machine or workflow engine ?

[Eleanor McHugh]

On 4 Aug 2009, at 12:25, Anthony Green wrote:
> Do you externalize your business processes?
> Do you use a state machine or workflow engine?
>
> Article of possible interest:
>
> http://www.opensourcery.co.za/2009/07/06/driving-business-processes-in-ruby

Ruote looks interesting. Its DSL is reminiscent of Hoare's CSP  
calculus, which is best known as the inspiration for Occam. Ruby would  
be a better language if it had this kind of concurrency (or even  
better, pi-calculus) baked into the core - then there wouldn't be so  
much Erlang envy ;)

For some thought-provoking reading I recommend Norbert Wiener's  
classic "Cybernetics" and more generally anything to do with systems  
theory. As a very crude generalisation the field's concerned with how  
black boxes are tied together by information flows and feedback loops  
making it applicable to automation of all kinds. The black boxes can  
be thought of as state machines which makes it handy for marrying the  
two models together.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
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raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason