Mapping to Business Execution Languages :
Business Process Modeling Languages are XML-based meta-languages used as a means of modeling business processes in an XML format. Many different Business Process Modeling languages have been proposed. Most of them use XML and build on top of the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) by the W3C standards body. A major flaw of WSDL is that the language mixes static interface description and binding information to certain communication protocols.
The new breed of Business Process Modeling Languages include the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS), created through a joint effort of BEA, IBM, and Microsoft, and the Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) created by BPMI.ORG.
Both of the standards provide specifications for:
• Dataflow
• Messages
• Events
• Business Rules
• Exceptions
• Transactions (Distributed, Compensating, Synchronous, Asynchronous)
BPMN Maps Directly to Execution Languages :
As mentioned in the introduction, BPMI has developed BPMN with a solid mathematical foundation – the Pi-Calculus branch of Process Calculi has been used. This is a formal method of computation that forms the foundation for dynamic and mobile processes. It means that business processes designed using the BPMN standard can be directly mapped to any business modeling executable languages for immediate execution. Again, this is analogous to the functionality of relational data models and the generation of SQL/DDL statements.
BPMS’s Orchestrate Web Services :
The internet is a heterogeneous environment of many different platforms and applications. In an end-to-end value chain, organizations and individuals want to pick best-of-breed components that provide the value chain with best value. The applications and services need to work together harmoniously. This is one of the driving forces for the standardization of web services.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this paper, making web services work is a four stage process – designing the processes with BPMN, verifying them for efficiency with simulation, making them available by publishing them using a business process execution language, and orchestrating and coordinating them using a Business Process Management System (BPMS).
BPMS’s offer the ability to transform the distinct disciplines of workflow, EAI, and B2B from a complex high-end solution practiced by a few highly skilled practitioner consultants into an open solution accessible to the masses of developers producing new types of agile, loosely coupled applications. BPMS’s orchestrate participants (applications, people, partners) into executable, end-to-end processes and close the gap between strategy and business execution.
How BPMN Fits In with UML :
The advent of BPMN, BPML’s, and BPMS’s does not render obsolete the need for systems development, such as that performed using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Systems development still has an important role to play in the overall enterprise architecture process.
UML is a language that helps developers specify, visualize, and document models of software systems. It is very much targeted at system architects and software engineers. It has been developed as a means to streamline the software development process, from architecture design to application implementation for use by a technical audience.
BPMN is targeted at business analysts, system architects, and software engineers. It has been developed as a way to streamline the overall business lifecycle development process from process design – performed by a business audience.
UML Is Alien to Most Business Analysts :
1. Static application structure
2. Dynamic behavior
3. Management and organization of software solutions
Of these categories it is the dynamic behavior diagrams that are often used for modeling business processes, such as the UML Activity diagram and Use Case diagram. BPMN is related to UML in the sense that it defines a graphical notation for business processes that is similar to UML behavior diagrams. However, BPMN and UML have very different approaches to business process modeling.
UML offers an object-oriented approach to the modeling of applications, while BPMN takes a process-centric approach. Most UML methods ask you to find the objects first using static structure diagrams, and then ask you to build dynamic behavior diagrams to show how objects interact. As a way to model, this method is alien to most business analysts.
BPMN offers a process-centric approach that is more natural and intuitive for the business analyst to use. With BPMN, control and message flows of processes are modeled first. An object model for the process is defined implicitly rather than explicitly. BPMN also offers you the option of explicitly modeling business objects that may be exposed through business services in your process flows.
UML Lacks an Implementation View of Business Models :
UML is an assemblage of diagrams that are the results of the collective best practices of the various founding practitioners. Unfortunately, what this means is that the diagrams are an aggregation that have not been specifically designed to work with each other. As a consequence, developers can only model part of their applications with UML; the detailed implementation level is not covered. In contrast, BPMN defines a single type of diagram that has multiple views derived from the same underlying process execution meta-model. The natural result of this is that implementation in a business process execution language merely becomes another logical view of the process.
UML Lacks Mathematical Foundation to Map to BPEL’s :
Finally, UML does not define any execution meta-model for business processes modeled with it. Instead, any execution meta-model must be defined using Model Driven Architecture (MDA). BPMN is based on BPML’s process execution meta-model and so does not require any additional steps for the modeling fully executable processes.
BPMN and UML Play Together :
It is anticipated that BPMN and UML will co-exist. There will be technical users that do not intend to use BPML as the final means of deployment, who will continue to use UML. Figure 16 shows that BPMN can be used to drive solutions that will run directly on a BPMS or be used as a business analysis front-end for subsequent systems development using UML. In this scenario UML users would regard business processes merely as another type of componet.
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Monday, June 2, 2008
BPMN Enables Business Process Management (BPM)
BPMN is a core enabler for a new initiative in the Enterprise Architecture world – Business Process Management (BPM).
BPM is concerned with managing change to improve business processes. BPM is unifying the previously distinct disciplines of Process Modeling, Simulation, Workflow, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Business-to-Business (B2B) integration into a single standard.
The fact that Business Process Management is a new initiative might lead you to believe that business processes have not been managed previously. This is of course not true – many organizations have modeled and managed their business processes for years, using an eclectic mixture of tools and techniques.
These techniques have only been partially successful, or failed outright, because there has been a lack of standards and a complete lifecycle to control and guide the design and execution of business processes. Managing the process of change cannot be an ad-hoc process – it requires management to exercise control over the discovery, architecture, design, and deployment of processes. For management to understand the architecture, design, and deployment of processes, you need business modeling and business execution language standards.
BPMI.ORG Created to Establish BPM Standards :
The Business Process Management Initiative has been established to promote and develop the use of Business Process Management (BPM) through the use of standards for process design, deployment, execution, maintenance, and optimization of processes.
• BPMN, as a standard for modeling business processes,
• Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), as the standard business execution language, and
• Business Process Query Language (BPQL), a standard management interface for the deployment and execution of e-Business processes
Rigor of the BPMI.ORG Standards :
A very crucial and fundamental distinguishing feature of BPMI standards is that they have been developed with a solid mathematical foundation. The Pi-Calculus branch of Process Calculi has been used. This is a formal method of computation that forms the foundation for dynamic and mobile processes. This makes BPMI standards analogous to the mathematical foundation of relational theory that underpins relational database management systems (RDBMS’s). It means that business processes designed using the BPMN standard can be manipulated directly and executable language created and made available for immediate execution. Again, this is analogous to the functionality of relational data models and the generation of SQL/DDL statements. The business process modeling language (BPML) is designed by BPMI.org to be a Pi-Calculus-based standard description of a business process.
BPMN Maps to Business Execution Languages :
What’s more, BPMN has been specified to map directly to the BPML standard, and any other rival business execution languages that are introduced, such as BPEL4WS, developed by BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and others.
BPMI.ORG Works with OASIS for e-Business Standards :
OASIS is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces.
Both BPML (from BPMI.ORG), and BPEL4WS (from Microsoft, IBM, and others) have been submitted to OASIS, which has formed a technical committee to create a Business Process Execution language standard. The output from this committee is currently called Web Services – Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). BPML’s current status is that it is submitted as an influencing specification to the WS-BPEL committee.
BPMN Models Web Services :
Making web services work is a four-stage process, as follows:
1. Design the processes using BPMN.
2. Simulate the processes and modify them for efficiency.
3. Make the services available by publishing them using a Business Process Execution language.
4. Orchestrate the web services into end-to-end business flows by assembling them and coordinating their behavior. Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) are employed for this stage.
The OASIS WS-BPEL requires the development of new BPMS technologies where these functionalities will reside and be executed from.
We will examine each of the steps above in this whitepaper, beginning with a first look at the new BPMN standard. Finally, we’ll take a look at BPMN in relation to a popular industry standard for systems analysis, the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Effective planning and action-oriented information :
Making a decision and following through with appropriate action is easier when
your employees have a goal or strategy in mind. Action-oriented information is
essential when setting clear goals for individuals or businesses.
Focus on goals and actions :
Help ensure that strategic processes become a natural part of every employee’s
daily work and get the most value from your resources. Create a shared
understanding of the organization’s focus and goals.
Flexible action management :
Business Process Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX helps users establish
and manage actions. When you set up actions, the program automatically helps
ensure that your employees follow a standard structure, with follow-up as a
natural part of action planning. Using the structured and intuitive tools of
Business Process Management, your employees can focus on what’s important,
by defining personalized actions, setting their own priorities, and selecting and
sorting various types of information such as action status, responsible persons
and date intervals.
Accelerate business performance :
Align managers and employees with your business strategy and improve
accountability by directly linking the daily work employees to the company’s
strategic goals, and plainly show each employee how their efforts contribute to
company results.
Increase transparency in your business processes :
Increase your employees’ motivation and productivity by letting people at all
levels openly see the measures that matter to them. You can still help maintain
the security of your business information because managers have the ability to
control access to sensitive data.
BPM is concerned with managing change to improve business processes. BPM is unifying the previously distinct disciplines of Process Modeling, Simulation, Workflow, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Business-to-Business (B2B) integration into a single standard.
The fact that Business Process Management is a new initiative might lead you to believe that business processes have not been managed previously. This is of course not true – many organizations have modeled and managed their business processes for years, using an eclectic mixture of tools and techniques.
These techniques have only been partially successful, or failed outright, because there has been a lack of standards and a complete lifecycle to control and guide the design and execution of business processes. Managing the process of change cannot be an ad-hoc process – it requires management to exercise control over the discovery, architecture, design, and deployment of processes. For management to understand the architecture, design, and deployment of processes, you need business modeling and business execution language standards.
BPMI.ORG Created to Establish BPM Standards :
The Business Process Management Initiative has been established to promote and develop the use of Business Process Management (BPM) through the use of standards for process design, deployment, execution, maintenance, and optimization of processes.
• BPMN, as a standard for modeling business processes,
• Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), as the standard business execution language, and
• Business Process Query Language (BPQL), a standard management interface for the deployment and execution of e-Business processes
Rigor of the BPMI.ORG Standards :
A very crucial and fundamental distinguishing feature of BPMI standards is that they have been developed with a solid mathematical foundation. The Pi-Calculus branch of Process Calculi has been used. This is a formal method of computation that forms the foundation for dynamic and mobile processes. This makes BPMI standards analogous to the mathematical foundation of relational theory that underpins relational database management systems (RDBMS’s). It means that business processes designed using the BPMN standard can be manipulated directly and executable language created and made available for immediate execution. Again, this is analogous to the functionality of relational data models and the generation of SQL/DDL statements. The business process modeling language (BPML) is designed by BPMI.org to be a Pi-Calculus-based standard description of a business process.
BPMN Maps to Business Execution Languages :
What’s more, BPMN has been specified to map directly to the BPML standard, and any other rival business execution languages that are introduced, such as BPEL4WS, developed by BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and others.
BPMI.ORG Works with OASIS for e-Business Standards :
OASIS is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces.
Both BPML (from BPMI.ORG), and BPEL4WS (from Microsoft, IBM, and others) have been submitted to OASIS, which has formed a technical committee to create a Business Process Execution language standard. The output from this committee is currently called Web Services – Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). BPML’s current status is that it is submitted as an influencing specification to the WS-BPEL committee.
BPMN Models Web Services :
Making web services work is a four-stage process, as follows:
1. Design the processes using BPMN.
2. Simulate the processes and modify them for efficiency.
3. Make the services available by publishing them using a Business Process Execution language.
4. Orchestrate the web services into end-to-end business flows by assembling them and coordinating their behavior. Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) are employed for this stage.
The OASIS WS-BPEL requires the development of new BPMS technologies where these functionalities will reside and be executed from.
We will examine each of the steps above in this whitepaper, beginning with a first look at the new BPMN standard. Finally, we’ll take a look at BPMN in relation to a popular industry standard for systems analysis, the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Effective planning and action-oriented information :
Making a decision and following through with appropriate action is easier when
your employees have a goal or strategy in mind. Action-oriented information is
essential when setting clear goals for individuals or businesses.
Focus on goals and actions :
Help ensure that strategic processes become a natural part of every employee’s
daily work and get the most value from your resources. Create a shared
understanding of the organization’s focus and goals.
Flexible action management :
Business Process Management in Microsoft Dynamics AX helps users establish
and manage actions. When you set up actions, the program automatically helps
ensure that your employees follow a standard structure, with follow-up as a
natural part of action planning. Using the structured and intuitive tools of
Business Process Management, your employees can focus on what’s important,
by defining personalized actions, setting their own priorities, and selecting and
sorting various types of information such as action status, responsible persons
and date intervals.
Accelerate business performance :
Align managers and employees with your business strategy and improve
accountability by directly linking the daily work employees to the company’s
strategic goals, and plainly show each employee how their efforts contribute to
company results.
Increase transparency in your business processes :
Increase your employees’ motivation and productivity by letting people at all
levels openly see the measures that matter to them. You can still help maintain
the security of your business information because managers have the ability to
control access to sensitive data.
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