Essential Business Process Modeling

Essential Business Process Modeling

Part I: Concepts

Chapter 1. Introduction to Business Process Modeling
Section 1.1. The Benefits of BPM
Section 1.2. BPM Acid Test: The Process-Oriented Application
Section 1.3. The Morass of BPM
Section 1.4. Workflow
Section 1.5. Roadmap
Section 1.6. Summary
Section 1.7. References

Chapter 2. Prescription for a Good BPM Architecture
Section 2.1. Designing a Solution
Section 2.2. Components of the Design
Section 2.3. Standards
Section 2.4. Summary
Section 2.5. Reference

Chapter 3. The Scenic Tour of Process Theory
Section 3.1. Family Tree
Section 3.2. The Pi-Calculus
Section 3.3. Petri Nets
Section 3.4. State Machines and Activity Diagrams
Section 3.5. Summary
Section 3.6. References

Chapter 4. Process Design Patterns
Section 4.1. Design Patterns and the GoF
Section 4.2. Process Patterns and the P4
Section 4.3. Yet Another Workflow Language (YAWL)
Section 4.4. Additional Patterns
Section 4.5. Process Coding Standards
Section 4.6. Summary
Section 4.7. References

Part II: Standards

Chapter 5. Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)
Section 5.1. Anatomy of a Process
Section 5.2. BPEL Example
Section 5.3. BPEL in a Nutshell
Section 5.4. BPELJ
Section 5.5. BPEL and Patterns
Section 5.6. Summary
Section 5.7. References

Chapter 6. BPMI Standards: BPMN and BPML
Section 6.1. BPMN
Section 6.2. BPML
Section 6.3. Summary
Section 6.4. Reference

Chapter 7. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)
Section 7.1. The Reference Model
Section 7.2. XPDL
Section 7.3. WAPI
Section 7.4. WfXML
Section 7.5. Summary
Section 7.6. References

Chapter 8. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): Choreography
Section 8.1. About the W3C
Section 8.2. Choreography and Orchestration
Section 8.3. WS-CDL
Section 8.4. WSCI
Section 8.5. WSCL
Section 8.6. Summary
Section 8.7. References

Chapter 9. Other BPM Models
Section 9.1. OMG: Model-Driven BPM
Section 9.2. ebXML BPSS: Collaboration
Section 9.3. Microsoft XLANG: BPEL Forerunner
Section 9.4. IBM WSFL: BPEL Forerunner
Section 9.5. BPEL, XLANG, and WSFL
Section 9.6. Summary
Section 9.7. References

Part III: Examples

Chapter 10. Example: Human Workflow in Insurance Claims Processing
Section 10.1. Oracle BPEL Process Manager
Section 10.2. Setting Up the Environment
Section 10.3. Developing the Example
Section 10.4. Testing the Example
Section 10.5. Summary
Section 10.6. References

Chapter 11. Example: Enterprise Message Broker
Section 11.1. What Is a Message Broker?
Section 11.2. Example: Employee Benefits Message Broker
Section 11.3. Summary

The book is organized into three parts, eleven chapters and a glossary:

Part One, Concepts

Covers the BPM essentials, an approach to BPM architecture, a tour of BPM theory, and a survey of process design patterns and coding practices.

Chapter 1, Introduction to Business Process Modeling

Examines what BPM (and is not!) and discusses its benefits.

Chapter 2, Prescription for a Good BPM Architecture

Develops a model BPM architecture, and discusses the main pieces of a "good" BPM application, the design of each piece, and which standards are adopted.

Chapter 3, The Scenic Tour of Process Theory

Provides a tour of the Pi Calculus, Petri nets, state machines, and UML activity diagrams, and why they matter. Practical software books seldom delve into theory, but theory matters more in BPM than in most software subjects.

Chapter 4, Process Design Patterns

Includes a detailed look at the 20 process patterns identified by some of the leading BPM theorists, a group referred to in this book as the "P4." The patterns cover common branch-and-join and synchronization scenarios. Also covered are process communication patterns, human interaction patterns, and briefly, coding best practices.

Part Two, Standards

Provides a detailed look at BPEL; the BPMI specifications (BPML and BPMN); the WfMC (WAPI, XPDL, WfXML, and the reference architecture); web services choreography (WSCI, WS-CDL, WSCL); and the OMG's model-driven approach (BPDM, BPRI), BPSS, XLANG, and WSFL.

Chapter 5, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

Provides a detailed look at BPEL, the leading BPM standard.

Chapter 6, BPMI Standards: BPMN and BPML

Examines BPMI and its two standards: BPML and BPMN.

Chapter 7, The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)

Overviews the main offerings of the WfMC: the reference model, WAPI, WfXML, and XPDL.

Chapter 8, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C): Choreography

Examines the W3C's work in choreography. Provides an overview of web services choreography and orchestration, and examines how they differ. A look at three choreography languages of the W3C: WSCI, WS-CDL, and WSCL.

Chapter 9, Other BPM Models

Discusses four process languages that are too important not to mention. Examines how XLANG and WSFL have influenced BPEL, the nature of collaboration in BPSS, and the OMG's model-driven architecture (MDA) and leading BPM models.

Part Three, Examples

Develops two substantial BPEL applications using Oracle BPEL Process Manager.

Chapter 10, Example: Human Workflow in Insurance Claims Processing

Illustrates a fully functional working example of a BPEL insurance claim processing application based on the Oracle BPEL Process Manager product, including how to incorporate human workflow into an otherwise automated process.

Chapter 11, Example: Enterprise Message Broker

Develops another working example, a central message broker application that manages system communications for a company's employee benefits. Shows BPMN graphical modeling with ITpearls' Process Modeler and BPEL implementation with Oracle BPEL Process Manager.

Glossary

BPM is rife with three-letter acronyms (or TLAs). Our glossary decodes some of the most important terms.