BPEL standardizes process management

Business process management provides a graphical approach to automating and monitoring business activities, integrating enterprise applications and managing manual tasks. Historically, BPM products have utilized their own proprietary process languages, design tools and engines. Now that BPM is considered a key aspect of service-oriented architecture, the lack of an industry standard is a significant problem.

An upcoming standard called Web Services Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is an important step toward addressing this concern.

Originally co-written by BEA Systems, IBM and Microsoft, and currently under review and revision by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, BPEL has attracted a lot of attention and industry backing.

Slated for completion by year-end, BPEL should encourage the adoption of BPM and SOA technologies by companies that have hesitated because they were concerned about portability and protecting their investment. It also should result in the proliferation of new products and solutions, giving buyers newfound levels of flexibility and freedom in choosing tools and platforms.

BPEL is a programming language written in XML. With BPEL-based visual process design tools, developers will be able to use drag-and-drop diagrams to create programs that automate interactions between Web services. This activity is often referred to as Web service orchestration. The processes can range from simple to complex, and they can talk to Web services running on any platform, such as Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition and .Net.

It is important to note that BPEL can only talk to Web services; Web service orchestration is all it does. It is not intended to integrate with resources that do not offer a Web service interface (such as legacy or custom applications). It is expected that BPEL often will be extended with other languages, such as Java, and paired with other technologies to address these needs.

BPEL is well positioned to take advantage of a significant and timely IT trend: SOA, a standards-based organizational and design methodology that more closely aligns IT with business processes. Using standard interfaces and shared Web services that help mask the underlying technical complexity of IT environments, SOA enables greater re-use of IT assets. This can result in more rapid development, and more reliable delivery of new and enhanced business services.

Once a corporation has built up a library of reusable Web services, BPEL will make it fairly straightforward to tie these services together into new applications. But these services will still have to come from somewhere; IT will need to build, expose and manage these services.

Because BPEL assumes that everything is exposed as a Web service, it won’t always help solve these latter problems. A range of other technologies will continue to be relevant for this purpose and in completing the SOA stack. A few examples are enterprise application integration products ——which can handle the sticky data and integration problems——and service bus products, which will provide centralized management and monitoring of a corporation’s Web services.

Just as BPEL is the first step in BPM standardization, it also is just one of several technologies that eventually will make up most SOA deployments.

While there have been previous attempts at creating a standardized business process language, BPEL has attracted an unprecedented level of interest and is the first to gain critical mass among software vendors.

BPEL語言實(shí)現(xiàn)過程管理的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化

業(yè)務(wù)過程管理(BPM)提供了圖形化的方式實(shí)現(xiàn)商業(yè)活動(dòng)的自動(dòng)化和監(jiān)視。過去，BPM產(chǎn)品利用它們自己專有的過程語言、設(shè)計(jì)工具和引擎?，F(xiàn)在，既然BPM被認(rèn)為是面向服務(wù)架構(gòu)(SOA)的關(guān)鍵部件，缺乏工業(yè)標(biāo)準(zhǔn)就是個(gè)大問題。

一個(gè)即將到來、稱作Web服務(wù)業(yè)務(wù)過程執(zhí)行語言(BPEL)的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)是解決此問題的重要步驟。

最初由BEA、IBM和微軟共同編寫、目前由推進(jìn)結(jié)構(gòu)化信息標(biāo)準(zhǔn)組織進(jìn)行評(píng)估和修改的BPEL吸引了業(yè)界極大的關(guān)注和支持。

預(yù)定要在今年底完成的BPEL將鼓勵(lì)那些因?yàn)閾?dān)心可移植性和保護(hù)投資而猶豫不決的公司采用BPM和SOA技術(shù)。它也將導(dǎo)致新產(chǎn)品和解決方案的大量出現(xiàn)，讓買家在選擇工具和平臺(tái)時(shí)擁有新的靈活性和自由度。

BPEL是基于XML的編程語言。利用基于BPEL的可視化的過程設(shè)計(jì)工具，開發(fā)人員利用鼠標(biāo)的拖、拽就能生成程序，實(shí)現(xiàn)Web服務(wù)之間交互的自動(dòng)化。此活動(dòng)常常被稱為“Web服務(wù)管弦樂”。過程可以多種多樣，從簡(jiǎn)單到復(fù)雜，能與在任何平臺(tái)(如Java 2平臺(tái)企業(yè)版和.Net)上運(yùn)行的Web服務(wù)交談。

請(qǐng)注意，BPEL只能與Web服務(wù)交談，這點(diǎn)很重要。它所做的全都是Web服務(wù)管弦樂。它無意整合不提供Web服務(wù)接口(如老式的或定制的應(yīng)用程序)的資源。BPEL可望擴(kuò)展到其他語言(如Java)和其他技術(shù)配合使用，以滿足這些需求。

BPEL定位在利用重要的和現(xiàn)時(shí)的IT趨勢(shì)——SOA，一種基于標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的組織和設(shè)計(jì)方法論，它更緊密地將IT(信息技術(shù))與商業(yè)過程結(jié)合起來。SOA利用標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化的接口和共享的Web服務(wù)，幫助屏蔽基礎(chǔ)的IT環(huán)境的技術(shù)復(fù)雜性，從而更大程度地重復(fù)使用IT資產(chǎn)。這將帶來更快的開發(fā)、更可靠地交付新的和增強(qiáng)的商業(yè)服務(wù)。

一旦公司建立了可重復(fù)使用的Web服務(wù)庫，BPEL就使這些Web服務(wù)連在一起構(gòu)成新的應(yīng)用程序變得相當(dāng)簡(jiǎn)單明了。但是這些服務(wù)還必須來自某個(gè)地方，IT部門仍將需要編制、公布和管理這些服務(wù)。

由于BPEL假設(shè)一切東西都按Web服務(wù)發(fā)布，所以它不會(huì)解決后面的那些問題。多種其他的技術(shù)還將繼續(xù)與此目的有關(guān)，用于SOA的整體完成。其中的例子包括企業(yè)應(yīng)用集成產(chǎn)品——能處理數(shù)據(jù)和集成連在一起的問題，以及服務(wù)總線產(chǎn)品——提供集中管理和監(jiān)視公司W(wǎng)eb服務(wù)。

BPEL只是BPM標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化的第一步，也只是最終構(gòu)成大多數(shù)SOA應(yīng)用中多種技術(shù)中的一個(gè)。

盡管以前有過建立標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化商業(yè)過程語言的企圖，但BPEL引起了空前的注意，是第一個(gè)贏得大多數(shù)軟件廠商支持的語言。