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語言實現過程管理的標準化

業務過程管理(BPM)提供了圖形化的方式實現商業活動的自動化和監視。過去，BPM產品利用它們自己專有的過程語言、設計工具和引擎。現在，既然BPM被認為是面向服務架構(SOA)的關鍵部件，缺乏工業標準就是個大問題。

一個即將到來、稱作Web服務業務過程執行語言(BPEL)的標準是解決此問題的重要步驟。

最初由BEA、IBM和微軟共同編寫、目前由推進結構化信息標準組織進行評估和修改的BPEL吸引了業界極大的關注和支持。

預定要在今年底完成的BPEL將鼓勵那些因為擔心可移植性和保護投資而猶豫不決的公司采用BPM和SOA技術。它也將導致新產品和解決方案的大量出現，讓買家在選擇工具和平臺時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的可視化的過程設計工具，開發人員利用鼠標的拖、拽就能生成程序，實現Web服務之間交互的自動化。此活動常常被稱為“Web服務管弦樂”。過程可以多種多樣，從簡單到復雜，能與在任何平臺(如Java 2平臺企業版和.Net)上運行的Web服務交談。

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

BPEL定位在利用重要的和現時的IT趨勢——SOA，一種基于標準的組織和設計方法論，它更緊密地將IT(信息技術)與商業過程結合起來。SOA利用標準化的接口和共享的Web服務，幫助屏蔽基礎的IT環境的技術復雜性，從而更大程度地重復使用IT資產。這將帶來更快的開發、更可靠地交付新的和增強的商業服務。

一旦公司建立了可重復使用的Web服務庫，BPEL就使這些Web服務連在一起構成新的應用程序變得相當簡單明了。但是這些服務還必須來自某個地方，IT部門仍將需要編制、公布和管理這些服務。

由于BPEL假設一切東西都按Web服務發布，所以它不會解決后面的那些問題。多種其他的技術還將繼續與此目的有關，用于SOA的整體完成。其中的例子包括企業應用集成產品——能處理數據和集成連在一起的問題，以及服務總線產品——提供集中管理和監視公司Web服務。

BPEL只是BPM標準化的第一步，也只是最終構成大多數SOA應用中多種技術中的一個。

盡管以前有過建立標準化商業過程語言的企圖，但BPEL引起了空前的注意，是第一個贏得大多數軟件廠商支持的語言。