SOA-based business process management (BPM), workflow (WF), soabpm

SOA-based business process management (BPM), workflow (WF), soabpm

Workflow Module Design Based on Business Component Model

 

Summary

 

Currently, BPLE-based business process management (BPM) and XPDL-based workflows (WF) have mature theories and corresponding product support, especially in China, workflow (WF) is widely used. This document starts with a process, combines business process management, workflows, performance management, personal portals, and other concepts to combine business process management and workflows to build an enterprise-level cross-system process integration architecture.

 

What is a process?

 

In Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), process is an important concept. Business Process Management includes manual tasks, combined with thoughts on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and data warehouse (DW) (hereinafter referred to as SOA and DW) and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and business components (BC) (hereinafter referred to as SOA and BC) on the design of shared libraries and business components, this article further describes how to design and implement the workflow management component.

 

Processes and jobs

 

A Process is a series of jobs that produce a certain result. It is an orderly combination of multiple people and jobs according to certain rules. It cares about who has done what, what results are produced and who the information is passed. A process must reflect the value of an enterprise. A process without value is meaningless. Therefore, each process has its own specific performance goals. In an information system, a process is composed of several jobs (Operation) according to certain rules and can be described using a business flow chart. Its objectives are embodied through performance indicators. A job is a series of activities to achieve a customizable goal and is the basic unit of a business process. In the information system, the front-end of a job shows several interfaces. the backend is composed of several services into functional units according to certain rules.

In this article, the process refers to all the workflows of an enterprise. All the activities of an enterprise can be seen as one process, and the process is composed of several tasks, in IT technology, a process is called a workflow and a job is called a process node.

 

Process Specification XPDL and BPEL

 

In IT technology, the "Business process developer", represented by WfMC, was first established in 1993 by the workflow management Alliance (WfMC, they mainly support the use of XPDL as the descriptive language to describe business processes.

 

Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, represented by the organizations supported by IBM, MicroSoft, and BEA

 

Once again, the OMG organizations that have been well known for their specifications are not weak. They joined with the BPMI organization to develop a unique approach to Notation Specification. First, the BPMN Specification was introduced, then, BPDM (Business Process Definition Metamodel BPDM) was launched ).

 

In April 2003, The BPEL specification was submitted to OASIS and changed its name to the WSBPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language) specification. This specification describes how to process input messages. It is not a standardized definition of business processes. Simply put, you can regard it as a programming language in XML format, providing the ability to combine WSDL-Services into a control flow. Because BPLE has poor support for manual activities, it is further extended to BPEL4People (WS-BPEL Extension for People) from being able to orchestrate only Web services, extended to support simultaneous orchestration of Web Services and role-based manual activities.

 

Business Process Management (BPM) and workflow management (WFM)

 

Business Process Management BPM is generally defined as a set of comprehensive Management modes to achieve the integration of various Business links of an enterprise. BPM optimizes the combination of personnel, devices, desktop application systems, enterprise-level background applications, and other content to achieve cross-application, cross-department, cross-partner and customer business operations.

 

According to the definition of WfMC, a Work Flow is a part or whole of the automatically operated business process, which is manifested by the participant taking action on files, information or tasks according to the procedure, and it is transferred between participants. Simply put, a workflow is a series of interconnected and automatic business activities or tasks.

 

Workflow Management (WFM) is an automated coordination, control, and communication between people and computers. It runs software on the network in a computer-based business process, make the execution of all commands under control. Under workflow management, the workload can be monitored and distributed to different users to achieve a balance.

 

In this article, business process management (BPM) refers to business process integration based on the BPEL standard, mainly to achieve integration between systems; workflow (WF) it refers to the business process of manual activities. Based on the XPDL standard or BPEL4People standard, human-computer interaction is integrated to implement internal and cross-system process approval within the system. With regard to business processes (BPM), there are currently many mature products that are not described too much. This article is based on WFM and is designed based on the SOA and BC method, the Design Model of the workflow management component is provided. Workflows are closely related to performance, personal portals, and instant communication. For example, each job process node is aggregated and displayed as a Personalized Portal at the front end. The instant communication platform enables real-time communication between personnel.

 

Business Process Modeling symbol (BPMN)

 

The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is developed by BPMI (The Business Process Management Initiative) as a set of Business Process Modeling symbols. In May 2004, The BPMN 1.0 specification was released. The main goal of BPMN is to provide symbols that are easy to understand by all business users, from creating business analysis of process outlines to implementing these processes until end users manage and monitor them. BPMN also supports providing an internal model for generating executable BPEL4WS. BPMN defines a Business Process Diagram (Business Process diworkflow). The Business flow Diagram is based on a Flowcharting flow chart, which is designed to create a graphical model for Business Process operations. A Business Process Model refers to a mesh composed of graphical objects. A graphic object includes activities (acticities) and flow controllers used to define the execution sequence of these activities)

 

In this article, business process management (BPM) refers to business process integration based on the BPEL standard, mainly to achieve integration between systems; workflow (WF) it refers to the business process of manual activities. Based on the XPDL standard or BPEL4People standard, it mainly realizes the integration of man-machine interaction and aims to implement internal and cross-system approval of the system. With regard to business processes (BPM), there are currently many mature products that are not described too much. This article focuses on Workflow Management (WFM) for design, at the same time, considering that BPMN will be used more in the future, BPMN will be used for drawing. Workflows are closely related to performance. Each job process node is aggregated and displayed as a Personalized Portal at the front end. In addition to workflow communication, there are also Message platforms that enable collaboration between personnel.

 

Workflow management (WFM) Component Design

 

An enterprise can be viewed as an enterprise entity object, including the organization, personnel, products, and other processes that continuously run under different environments and conditions. The entity object and operation process are mapped to the information system, it corresponds to data (which can be described using ER diagrams) and business processes (which can be described using flowcharts, business logic, and business rules ). Data and business processes fully reflect the state of an object and its motion. In the real society, the movement of objects is embodied in a series of activities. In the information system, activities are represented as a process node. objects are completed through a series of business activities until they are finally completed, the state of data is constantly changing in the information system until the data is finally completed.

 

In the article SOA and BC, I mentioned the OSGi-based modular design idea. workflow management is a public component module, if it is upgraded to an enterprise-level public service platform, it is an independent workflow management business component that can achieve cross-system workflow integration. The following describes how to integrate SOA and BC, further refine the design ideas of the workflow management module (or workflow management business component.

 

Loosely Coupled Design of Workflow Components

 

The traditional office automation or collaborative office system requires two basic functions to implement workflow-based Flow: workflow engine and Custom forms, with these two basic functions, You can implement flow in a system. However, to integrate all the applications of an enterprise (no matter what platform or developer), you must integrate all the services into a workflow platform, workflow Components are required to provide a loosely coupled connection method to integrate all applications in one unit to ensure that existing systems can be integrated into a unified workflow, so as to achieve a unified enterprise workflow, comprehensively monitors enterprise processes.

 

Combined with the idea of SOA and BC, the workflow component is taken as an independent public component. In order to achieve better coupling with other business components and different modules inside the public component, workflow Components provide external interfaces in the form of Web services and call them through ESB and business components. At the same time, to ensure performance, you can embed the workflow engine into business components and call it through a class bus (API. In this way, both the integration with internal business components and the process integration with external systems of the application can be realized. From the perspective of business component division, the workflow module can be used as an independent business component. From the perspective of convenient management, combining it with other functional modules is a part of public components.

 

Figure1.Public component model-workflow module

[Note]

The form customization function is one of the important functions of the interface management module.

The workflow management component in this article is actually a part of the public component.

Workflow Components and other business components can be called through Web Services in asynchronous and synchronous transmission modes. Synchronous transmission is mainly applicable to business scenarios where two systems must submit at the same time. synchronous transmission requires waiting for feedback from another system, which affects the performance of the system that submits Web Services; asynchronous transmission is mainly applicable to business scenarios where Web services can be submitted asynchronously, ensuring the performance of Web Service System submission, the asynchronous submission method must consider that when the system that receives the service goes down or the network fails, the Web service can be accurately transmitted to the receiving system. Asynchronous transmission is generally completed through message-oriented middleware.

We recommend that you trigger the call sequence of loosely coupled Web Services in SOA and BC. Based on this call method, business components only provide query or write services, instead of Directly Writing code to call the service, the business components are loosely coupled. This call method is also applicable to Workflow Components. For example, the customer registration process was completed by the CRM system at the beginning. However, as the business develops, the task of the customer registration process in the CRM system will change when the customer registration process starts online, if it is triggered, you only need to modify the Process Orchestration (which needs to be implemented by business process management (BPM) without modifying the CRM program. In a workflow component, the best implementation method is to initiate a process by the workflow component, as shown in the 2-1 startup process.

 

Figure2.Loosely Coupled call of Workflow Components

 

To achieve loose coupling, business components and workflow components do not interact with business data, but only transmit task information. Business components provide external Web services for obtaining or writing information, which is no different from the Web Services of common business components. Reading and Writing information are standard business services, this ensures that the Web services used for workflows are universal. To integrate with a workflow, only a special Web service "Notification completion" is provided to pass the task completion status or basic information to the workflow component, the basic information of a task is mainly used for trace management. The modified information is recorded to facilitate future audits. In this mode, business data and process data are separated. Workflow Components and business components do not interact with business data, which simplifies workflow integration. The workflow component provides Web services such as starting the process, modifying the Process status, starting the next step, and saving the basic information of the task.

 

In order to make the process platform highly scalable, if the workflow component requires business data, such as determining the business flow based on the business data, A standard service is also provided by a service component in the form of a Web service. It is implemented by means of BPEL. For example, to trace, the content for approval must be saved, you can use BPLE to call the query service and save the data to the process database. The call has nothing to do with the workflow engine. Cross-system flow is achieved through the orchestration of BPEL and the calling of Business Web services.

 

Workflow component composition and Business Component relationship

 

As a public component, the workflow module has three main functions: workflow engine, to-do task management, and workflow visualization management. The workflow engine is a basic module that provides workflow engines for all systems to implement logical control of workflow flow. To-Do task management mainly implements human-computer interaction and provides a unified management of to-do tasks, integrate common workflow engines and existing workflow engines (such as OA) of enterprises and tasks of common business systems (such as ERP without workflow engines) to form a unified to-do task management; workflow visualization management is mainly used for workflow visualization display. In addition to workflow definition, it can implement process monitoring, business performance indicator monitoring, process navigation, and other functions.

 

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