BPM, Web Services, and Standardization

Michael zur Muehlen Center of Excellence in Business Process Innovation Howe School of Technology Management Stevens Institute of Technology mzurmuehlen@stevens.edu

The Process Life Cycle

Goals, Evironmental Analysis, Organizational Analysis

Business Process Management

Measures for Improvement

Process Design

Process Models

Animation, Simulation

Metrics, Targets

Process Evaluation

Target Values

Process Implementation

other reporting purposes

Process Metrics

Process Enactment

Measure -ments

Process Metrics

Process Monitoring

Business Process Automation

Source: zur Muehlen (2004), p. 86.

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Implemented Processes

Proliferation of Standards What do they mean BPM standards have not been successful? On the contrary, they have been so successful that everybody has their own!
- Mark Twain
(if he were alive today)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Workflow Standardization
1994 1 standardization group for workflow Reference model + 5 interface standards Size of the average specification ~40 pages 2004 10+ standardization groups with interest in workflow 7+ standards for process models alone Size of the average specification ~100 pages Wasnt XML supposed to make our life easier?
2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

The Stack is Filling Up 1994

BPM Layer many choices Presentation Format Many forms technologies Message Format Many structures, IIOP Data Format CSV, text, binary Packet Layer TCP, Novell, LU 6.2 Network Ethernet, Token Ring, etc.

2004
BPM Layer Still many choices Presentation Format HTML Message Format SOAP Data Format XML Packet Layer TCP, HTTP Network Ethernet

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

standardized

Established Standardization Players

Workflow Management Coalition Workflow Process Definition Language (WPDL/XPDL) Workflow Process Interchange (IF 4/Wf-XML) Object Management Group OMG Workflow Facility Process Definition RFP (bom/99-10-03) Extension of UML for Workflow Modeling National Institute for Standards and Technologies/MIT Process Specification Language (PSL) Process Interchange Format (PIF)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

More Recent Standardization Players

Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) Business Process Query Language (BPQL) OASIS Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) ebXML Business Process Schedule Specification (BPSS) Asynchronous Service Access Protocol (ASAP) W3C Web Services Choreography Definition Language (WS-CDL) based on Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL) and Web Services Choreography Interface (WSCI) DARPA DARPA Agent Markup Language Services (DAML-S)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Web Services
Access remote service Protocol Based: Technology Independent .net Java XML Based: X-platform, X-OS WSDL definition of the interface UDDI to look for service Web Services is a sure bet

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Service Oriented Architecture

Remember Object-Oriented? Break application into modules Each module well defined function and interface Possible to re-use modules Module is a reusable Component SOA is for Enterprise Distributed Applications Break application into modules Each module well defined function and interface Possible to re-use modules Module is a reusable Service

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Choreography
Single Invocation of Web Service is well defined. Multiple Invocation, or Invocation of Multiple Web Services What constraints exist on order? What side effects will there be? How do I back out in the middle? How to get idempotent (all-or-none) behavior?

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Process Integration
Organization A
Private Processes Private Process A1 Public Processes Public Process

Organization B
Public Processes Public Process Private Processes Private Process

A2

A3

C1

message

D1

E1

A4

Private Process E3 B1 C2 message D2 E2

B2

B3

C3

message

D3

E4

Legend An Activity(n) Control Flow Data Flow Service Flow Operations: Semantics Addressing Exception Handling Messages: Content Encoding Sequencing Routing Ports: Addressing Access Authentication

Process Integration Standards Areas Reserved. 2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights

Integration in the small

source: www.rosettanet.org
2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Integration in the large

Request Quote

Quote

Request Purchase Order

Purchase Order Acknowledgement

Request Purchase Order Change

Long running business interactions are composed of multiple request-response conversations The state of the overall interaction must be kept by either party, to detect messages that are out of sync or uncorrelated This is the domain of web services choreography standards

Purchase Order Change Acknowledgement

Delivery Note

Delivery Note Confirmation

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

The Stack is Filling Up

1993
BPM Layer many choices Presentation Format Many forms technologies Message Format Many structures, IIOP Data Format CSV, text, binary Packet Layer TCP, Novell, LU 6.2 Network Ethernet, Token Ring, etc.

2003
BPM Layer Still many choices Presentation Format HTML Message Format SOAP Data Format XML Packet Layer TCP, HTTP Network Ethernet

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

standardized

The Politics of Standardization

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Hedging Bets: Vendor Involvement

ASAP BPML BPMI BPEL BPSS RosettaNet RosettaNet SOAP W3C SWAP IETF Wf-XML WfMC WSCI W3C OASIS OASIS ebXML

WSCL W3C

WSDL W3C

BEA CSC Chevron Cisco CommerceOne DHL E2Open FedEx Fujitsu HP IBM Intalio Intel iWay Izar, Inc. Lucent Microsoft Netscape Netfish Oracle SAP SeeBeyond Siebel Staffware SUN Telcordia UPS Versata

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Complexity: Length of Standards

Group W3C DAMLSC W3C NIST OASIS WfMC W3C IETF IETF IETF WfMC OMG BPMI IBM W3C OASIS OASIS RosettaNet ISO IETF OASIS OMG Standard WSCL DAML-S WSDL PSL ASAP Wf-XML XML HTTP FTP HTML XPDL Wf-Facility BPML WSFL SOAP BPEL BPSS RN Implementation Framework SGML HTTP BTP UML Year 2002 2002 2002 1998 2003 2002 2000 1996 1980 1995 2003 1997 2002 2001 2003 2003 2001 2002 1986 1999 2002 Version 1.0 0.9 1.2 0.98 0.1 1.1 1.0 1.0 1.0 2.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 1.2 1.1 1.01 2.00.01 1.0 1.1 1.0 Pages 22 26 30 32 34 57 59 60 70 70 87 95 103 108 128 136 136 143 155 176 188 736

2003 2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.1.5

Process Interoperability

A matter of taste

From Processes to Services

Consider a workflow process where three activities need to be performed. But
Request Purchase Approval

The workflow system does not do the work! It only coordinates the work of others. And..

Initiate Purchase

The workflow system did not initiate the process, it is merely performing in response

compare zur Muehlen, Swenson (2001)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Process and Activity Decomposition

Request Purchase Purchase Supplies Approval

Initiate Purchase

compare zur Muehlen, Swenson (2001)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Workflow Management System

The workflow system acts as an intermediary The entire process can be controlled through standardized interfaces The process itself can control activities through standardized interfaces

Workflow System

compare zur Muehlen, Swenson (2001)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Workflow and (Web) Services

Requester Provider
Service Requester Requests service to be performed Inquires about status of execution Service Provider Processes service requests Informs requester on status of the request (But: Web Services are stateless) Model introduced in the OMG Workflow Management Facility interfaces Wf-XML

Interoperability

compare zur Muehlen, Swenson (2001)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Interoperability Standards
Workflow 1

Interoperability Standards
Workflow 2

compare zur Muehlen, Swenson (2001)

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Two Design Philosophies

Operation Oriented Operations have addresses Operation is unique and very specific One location Strongly typed information Linkage only at Design Time Resource Oriented Every Instance has an address Small number of generic operations on that address Location can be anywhere on internet Loosely typed information Can support link at Run Time
2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Operation-Oriented Workflow
SOAP Server Create Purchase Order SOAP Client Invocator Connector SOAP Message Get Purchase Order Status A1 Process Interface Process Model

List Purchase Orders Update Purchase Order Cancel Purchase Order

A2

A3

A4

Observer PurchaseOrde rStateChange dListener PurchaseOrder Updated Listener PurchaseOrder Completed Listener SOAP Message

A1

A2

A3

Connector

A4

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Resource-oriented Workflow
REST Client REST Server Process Factory Invocator GET URI Process InfoXML Connector POST (Context) URI Process Instance URI A4 A2 A3 Process Model A1

Observer

GET URI ProcessInstance StateXML

Process Instance(State) URI A1

Connector POST (State) URI NewProcess InstanceStateUR I

URI A2

A3 URI

URI A4

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.

Resource vs. Operation Oriented

The WWW is resource-oriented
Easy to link pages Scalable to any size No upgrade problems But links can break, must handle at run time

BPEL is operation-oriented
Powerful Design Tools Needed Inflexible, change only by going back to design Many standards need to be in place

Wf-XML is resource-oriented
Easy to link at any time No upgrade problems But links can break, must handle at run time

2004 M. zur Muehlen - All Rights Reserved.