Business Process Management Architectures

Abstract

BPM architectures are in the centre of Chapter 7, starting from the WfMC Architecture and proceeding towards service oriented architectures and architectures for flexible workflow management. In particular, an architecture that allows to dynamically modify running workflow instances based on an object-oriented approach is introduced. Web services and their composition are sketched, describing the core concepts of the XML-based service composition language WS-BPEL. Advanced service composition based on semantic concepts are sketched, and case handling is introduced as a technique for flexible process enactment based on data dependencies rather than process structures.

Bibliographical Notes

The reference architecture of workflow management systems was introduced by the Workflow Management Coalition in Hollingsworth (1995); Workflow Management Coalition (2005) introduces the XML Process Definition Language.

Flexible workflow management is addressed in Reichert and Dadam (1998) in the context of the ADEPT project; Bauer et al. (2003) discusses load balancing issues in this project. Flexible workflow management in the context of the WASA project is reported in Medeiros et al. (1995). Weske (1998) and Weske (2000) introduce the WASA approach in detail that is also reported in this chapter.

An overview on flexible workflow management is given by Rinderle et al. (2003). Dynamic changes to process types and process instances are investigated in Rinderle et al. (2004). Ly et al. (2006) discusses semantic aspects in process execution control, focusing on execution semantics rather than application semantics. Investigations regarding change patterns in business processes and features in process-aware information systems are reported in Weber et al. (2007). Reichert et al. (2009) provide an overview of flexibility in process-aware information systems.

The concepts that constitute a service-oriented architecture were introduced in Burbeck (2000). Web services standards are put forward as recommendations by the World Wide Web Consortium. The SOAP recommendation is published as Gudgin et al. (2007), while the Web Services Description Language is available as Chinnici et al. (2007). The Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration is published in Clement et al. (2004).

Web services concepts, architectures, and applications are addressed in Alonso et al. (2009), starting from conventional middleware, including enterprise application integration middleware. Newcomer and Lomow (2005) look at practical aspects of service-oriented architectures. The relationship of workflow management and service-oriented architectures is addressed in Leymann et al. (2002).

The Web Services Business Process Execution Language, developed under the guidance of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is available in Oasis (2007).

Semantic service specifications and their use in service matchmaking, service composition, and flexible service enactment were addressed in the Adaptive Services Grid project, supported by the European Commission in the Sixth Framework Programme. The conceptual design of a service provisioning platform is introduced in Kuropka et al. (2006). The automated composition of services using a heuristic search algorithm is addressed in Meyer and Weske (2006). The adaptation of interfaces for composed services is addressed in Dumas et al. (2006).

In the context of semantic Web services, there are two major efforts. The Web Service Modeling Ontology has its centre of gravity in Europe, while the Web Ontology Language is mainly an American effort. In de Bruijn (2005), the Web Service Modelling Language is introduced as core part of the Web Service Modeling Ontology. An overview on the Ontology Web Language is given in McGuinness (2004). Semantics concepts are also used in Nagarajan et al. (2006) to foster the interoperability of Web services. Verma et al. (2006) introduces an approach to adapt Web processes to external events while preserving constraints that are required for the coordination of the services.

Case handling is introduced in van der Aalst et al. (2005b) from conceptual and technical points of view. The application of case handling is addressed in Reijers et al. (2003). Case handling is realized in the FLOWer business process management system, as reported in van der Aalst and Berens (2001). Recently, the term adaptive case management was coined, which includes concepts from case handling and flexible workflow management. Swenson (2010) presents several approaches related to adaptive case management.