Essential Business Process Modeling

Summary

The main points of this chapter include the following:

• The BPMI organization, founded by Intalio, has published two BPM standards specifications. BPML is an XML process modeling and execution language similar to BPEL. BPMN is a graphical modeling language. A specification for BPQL—a query, administration, and monitoring language—is coming soon.

• BPMI’s vision of a BPM stack consists of BPMN as the visual modeling language, BPEL with BPXL extensions as the execution language, BPQL as the query language for monitoring, WS-CDL as the choreography language, and BPSM as the process metamodel. BPMN, BPQL, BPXL, and BPSM are BPML standards, and WS-CDL is a W3C standard. The choice of BPEL (from OASIS) for execution language is surprising, given that BPMI offers competing language BPML. BPMI acknowledges BPEL’s supremacy in this category.

• BPMN is a graphical flowchart language suitable for both business analysts and developers. BPMN’s main constructs—processes, activities, gateways, events, pools, and swim lanes—are described in this chapter’s BPMN section. BPMN’s mapping to BPEL is also described at a high level; the holes in this mapping are attributable to BPMN’s excess of features. BPMN was built with the P4 patterns in mind, and thus rates well on its support for patterns.

• BPML is an XML-based language that defines the flow of control and runtime semantics of a business process. BPML’s notion of process, activity, context, and compensation is described in this chapter’s BPML section. ...