BPM Standards Landscape

Mike Marin WfMC Technical Committee Vice Chairman (Americas)

Software Architect, FileNet Corporation

2

Agenda

• Why standards?

• Some vertical process organizations

• BPM standards history

• Some standards and organizations

• Putting all together

3

Why Standards?

• Reduce risk for

• Customers

• Vendors

• Define and consolidates a market

• Creates common understanding

• Defines a minimum functionality set

4

Standards Reduce Risk for Customers

• Gives customer options

• Avoid vendor lockup

• Improve tool interoperability

• Define a minimum functionality set

5

Standards Reduce Risk for Vendors

• Reduce research and development

• Define the market needs and requirements

• Provide an opportunity to influence the market

6

BPM Space

Average Process Duration

Very Short

Very Long

Workflow

EAI Process

IT Developer

Business User

Component

Assembly Process Analysis

Process Definition

Proprietary Files Versioning

Process Repository

XML Process Repository

Process Discovery

Auditing Monitoring Business Measurements

Forecasting Simulation

BPM

Lifecycle

7

Process Templates by Vertical Groups

• Groups using BPM technology to create process

templates for a market

• Fully designed and documented process templates

• Good starting point

• Avoid designing process from scratch

• Decrease process project time to deployment

• Provide interoperability

• Examples

• RosettaNet

• OAGI

• HL7

8

RosettaNet

• Supply chain process templates for

• Information technology (IT)

• Electronic components (EC)

• Predefined partner interface process (PIP)

9

Open Applications Group (OAGI)

• EDI integration process templates

• For B2B and A2A

• Examples

• Customer Relationship Management

• Logistics

10

Health Level Seven (HL7)

• Processes templates for health care

• Examples

• HIPAA

• Patient Administration

• Laboratory Automation

11

BPM Standards

• XML is the language of standardization • Explosion of XML standards

• It takes time for standards to converge • But it is happening

• BPML, XLang, WSFL replaced by WS-BPEL

• Process Standards start converging • Modeling

• BPMN • XPDL

• Execution • WS-BPEL

• Foundation • Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) • Web Services (WSDL) • Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)

12

BPM and Workflow Standards History

OMG

1989

1993

WfMC

1993

SGML Open

1998

OASIS

2000

BPMI

2005 1997

1999

ebXML, WS-BPEL & ASAP

Workflow Facility, BPDM, BPRI, BPMN

WAPI, IF4-Mime Binding, WPDL, XPDL, wf-XML

BPMN

BPM Standards

1994

W3C

2003

WS-CDL

13

WfMC -- Workflow Management Coalition

• Founded in 1993

• Non-profit – open to all

• Mission Statement

• Increase the value of customer’s investment on workflow

and process technology

• Decrease the risk of using process products

• Expand the workflow and process market through

increasing awareness of the technology

www.wfmc.org

14

The WfMC Reference Model

Process Definition

& Modelling Tools

Process Management

Engine

Specification 3

Invoked

Applications

Specification 1 Process Definition

Audit Data

Specification 5 Specification 4 Other

Process

Management

Systems

Specification 2 Performer

Interface

Process

Interoperability

Application

Interface

Clients

15

WfMC Specifications

• Glossary (1994, 1996, 1999)

• Reference Model (1995)

• Workflow APIs

• “C” (1995, 1997)

• Interoperability Protocol & Bindings

• MIME (Email) (1995)

• Wf-XML (2000, 2001)

• Audit specification (1997, 1999)

• Process Definition Import/Export Specification

• WPDL (1999)

• XPDL (2002, 2005)

• OMG Submission

• Workflow Management (1999)

16

XML Process Definition Language (XPDL)

• A modeling language for Process Definition

• A Process Definition Meta-model

• Reference Model Interface 1 – Process definition

• Goals

• Process Definition Model interchange between tool

17

Workflow Interoperability (wf-XML)

• Interaction between requesters and providers of process

services

• For managing interactions with long running services

• Standardized minimum set of operations

• Reference Model Interface 4 – Process Interoperability

18

OMG -- Object Management Group

• founded in April 1989 by 11 companies

• Non-profit software consortium

• To create a component-based software marketplace

• Created

• CORBA, UML, MDA, …

www.omg.org

19

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)

• By the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI)

• Now part of OMG

• Graphical business notation to

• Describe processes

• Describe interaction between processes

• Design to be used by business analysts

20

Business Process Definition Meta-model (BPDM)

• OMG current work on Process Definition

• Not completed

• Encompassing meta-model for all BPM languages and

models, including

• WS-BPEL

• BPMN

• XPDL

• Etc.

• Based on UML

• MOF compliant

21

Business Process Runtime Interface (BPRI)

• OMG current work on BPM runtime interface

• Not completed

• API for workflow and process engines

• Access to executing processes

22

OASIS Organization for the Advancement of

Structured Information Standards

• Founded in 1998

• Emerged from SGML open

• Founded in 1993

• Non-profit consortium

• The goal is to drive the development, convergence,

and adoption of e-business standards

www.oasis-open.org

23

Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL)

• Based on BPEL4WS specification (2002)

• Web services composition

• Encapsulate services into higher level services

• Handle exception cases

• Web services orchestration

• Support for long term services with state

• Some choreography elements

• Abstract/opaque processes

• Just enough to describe the external process behavior without

disclosing the actual process

• Minimalist approach

24

Electronic Business using XML (ebXML)

• Created in November 1999

• It was a joint initiative of

• UN/CEFACT

• OASIS

• Goal is to enable electronic commerce

• Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS)

• ebXML Choreography language

• For binary choreographies

25

W3C -- World Wide Web Consortium

• Created in October 1994

• MIT, DARPA, CERN, & INRIA

• Leads the technical evolution of the web

• More than 35 specifications

• Including HTML, XML, CSS

www.w3c.org

26

Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL)

• Process Choreography specification

• Not complete

Organization or

Process

Organization or

process

Get Credit

Good Credit

Rejected

end

27

BPMN

Putting all together

BPEL Engine BPM Engine

XPDL BPEL

Web Services

UDDI

• BPMN

• For process modeling

• XPDL

• For BPM functionality

• BPEL

• For web services composition

• UDDI

• For process discovery

one way bidirectional

Pool 2

Pool 1