Relational databases define a strict structure and provide a rigid way to maintain data for a software application. Apache's open source CouchDB offers a new method of storing data, in what is referred to as a schema-free document-oriented database model. Instead of the highly structured data storage of a relational model, CouchDB stores data in a semi-structured fashion, using a JavaScript-based view model for generating structured aggregation and report results from these semi-structured documents. CouchDB has been developed from the ground up with Web applications as the primary focus and has its sights on becoming the de-facto database for Web application development.
Looking at recent articles and various BPM solutions, it would be easy to assume that BPEL is now the defacto standard to be used when implementing a workflow engine. From a technical perspective this may well be correct, however few people will claim that BPEL can be easily understood by the end-user, a.k.a the business analyst, who definitely prefers a graph based notation such as BPMN.
We have used Spring Roo in a web project and show how we generated an early prototype and transistioned to early development and then to production code.
Very interesting article, seems to be an extract of the author's book on rapid sw development from 1996 (sic). Many points (especially #4 e.g.) look quite familiar to me.
C. Krueger. PFE '01: Revised Papers from the 4th International Workshop on Software Product-Family Engineering, page 282--293. London, UK, Springer, (2002)