Lombardi Blueprint Embraces XPDL
July 14th, 2009 by Scott FrancisI’ve been a skeptic of XPDL as the pre-eminent format for BPMN-drawn Models, but I’ve also been encouraged by Keith Swenson’s efforts to prove that it could be the de facto standard for BPMN model exchanging.
But it looks like my judgment that XPDL would only catch on with vendors like Lombardi (who have been beating the drum for BPDM and BPMN2 for some time) only if BPMN 2.0 didn’t sufficiently address the interchange problem might be a little off. Lombardi just announced that its Blueprint July ’09 release supports XPDL! It could be that Lombardi is voting with its feet – perhaps BPMN2 doesn’t seem to solve the problem(s) they were hoping it would with regard to model interchange. Or, perhaps they see XPDL interchange as the Right Now solution, and don’t see an advantage in waiting on BPMN2 support. After all, not only would Lombardi have to build the BPMN 2 export/import functionality, they would then have to wait on myriad other modeling tools to pick up the baton in order for there to be anyone to “interchange” with.
By picking up XPDL support, Lombardi Blueprint can now exchange models with a host of other modeling tools listed on the XPDL vendor site (perhaps Lombardi will now be added to the site). Bruce Silver has already assessed portability between Blueprint and Process Modeler for Visio.
Update: more info from Keith Swenson on his blog, regarding exporting from Blueprint and importing into Fujitsu’s Interstage BPM.
Related posts:
- Another Model Portability Update
- Lombardi’s August Blueprint Update
- Is XPDL Going to Become a Dominant Process Standard?
- Keith Swenson on Model Portability
- August 2010 Blueprint Update
Tags: blueprint, BPMN 2.0, Bruce Silver, Lombardi, XPDL
July 14th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Scott,
XPDL is definitely a “right now” solution for us in that it clearly has the broadest tool support at the moment. It’s the best solution for BPMN diagram interchange for our customers today.
That being said, you shouldn’t read support of XPDL as an indictment of BPMN 2.0. We’re firmly behind BPMN 2.0 and think it will be the best solution in the future. In fact, look for Blueprint to be one of the first shipping implementations of the BPMN 2.0 serialization format…
Dave
July 15th, 2009 at 12:07 am
Dave- thanks for the clarification – looking forward to seeing BPMN2 support start shipping as well so we have something interesting to compare (between XPDL and BPMN2).
August 7th, 2009 at 12:27 am
[...] posted another update on model portability. This is related to the previous discussion regarding XPDL, Lombardi Blueprint support, and model [...]
August 10th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
[...] to call them BPM Collaboration tools. Recently we’ve seen updates to Lombardi’s Blueprint, the release (into Beta at least) of IBM’s Blueworks (interesting choice of names, IBM), and [...]