The Promise

From the forward of, "Business Engineering with Object Technology" by David Taylor:
We stand on the threshold of a new era in business engineering. For the first time in the history of computers, it is now possible to build information systems that directly reflect and expand the way we think about business processes. The critical enabler for this transformation is object technology.

Hmm... sound familiar? Well, once again, we find ourselves on the same ole quest.... to achieve a COmmon Business Oriented Language. Yes, I'm a fan of service oriented-bpm. I believe that we need a new vocabulary... for the last several years we have seen some consistent patterns in enterprise computing:
1. A gradual movement towards specialized verbs (servers/services).
2. A desire to separate the verbs from the adverbs (factor out non-functional requirements).
3. Separating nouns and adjectives from verb implementations (XML Schema vs. classes).
4. Standardize the prepositional phrase (predicate).
5. Create a sentence grammar (composition languages).

The verbs and the nouns that we choose to program our computers is central to productivity. The separation of our terms is essential. Breaking the bad habits of the object oriented verb-noun coupling will be tough. Creating our new vocabulary will be even harder. Finding a single Business Oriented Language may be impossible. Yet, we define our programming model by the means in which we separate our concepts. Moving beyond the standards gook is essential.

Oh, and just for fun - here are the verbs of COBOL: Accept, Add, Alter, Call, Cancel, Close, Compute, Delete, Disable, Display, Divide, Enable, Enter, Exit, Generate, GoTo, If, Initiate, Inspect, Merge, Move, Multiply, Open, Perform, Read, Receive, Replacing, Return, Rewrite, Search, Send, Set, Sort, Start, Stop, String, Subtract, Suppress, Terminate, Unstring, Use_After, Use_For_Debugging, Write

If only COBOL had the verbs 'publish', 'subscribe' and 'transform' ... then it we could have called it the 'COBOL-ESB' ;-)