Chapter 3 Business Process Model Basics
The Business Process Model lets you design different types of models for your different business needs. The type of the BPM comes from the process language attached to this model (see BPM process language).
This section develops how the different types of BPM can be used to analyze and design processes to implement. Prior to doing this, it is commonly admitted to begin with creating a process hierarchy diagram to identify processes and atomic tasks. Once the latter have been identified and a process hierarchy has been defined, you can proceed to the orchestration of processes in a business process diagram using flows, decisions etc.. At last, you can update the process hierarchy diagram, in case a task has been added or deleted using the Complete All command.
For more information on the Complete All command, see chapter Building a Process Hierarchy Diagram.
This case is the most commonly used.
Typically design starts using a model with the Analysis process language. Any non-technical analyst can use the Analysis BPM to draw the business requirements of a system. This stage is pure design, the analyst does not need to take into account implementation considerations.
The analyst can then generate the Analysis BPM into an executable BPM (Sybase Unwired Orchestrator or BPEL4WS process languages) using the Tools→Generate Business Process Model command. Model to model generation allows several levels of abstraction, so the analyst can regenerate the executable model several times. Model to model generation performs some, but not all, transformations to adapt the analysis model to the constraints of the selected executable process language. The remaining transformations need to be applied manually by correcting the errors and warnings highlighted during check model. A more technical user is more likely to perform these changes on the executable model.
When analysis is over and the last version of the executable model is generated, the technical user takes over the model to design implementation. At the end of the implementation stage, the technical user can generate the code of the executable BPM and load it in an executable process engine.
You know that your process will be executed using a process engine, but you want to start by designing the decomposition and choreography of tasks at a business level. You can start designing your model using the BPMN process language instead of the Analysis process language. This standardized notation allows you to describe the logic of your process execution and to bridge the gap to executable languages such as BPEL4WS or Sybase WorkSpace Business Process.
The remaining steps are globally the same as the ones when using the Analysis process language, except that you do not need to perform any transformations to adapt the BPMN model to the constraints of the selected executable process language.
A user can design a collaborative BPM using the ebXML BPSS process language. This type of model is used to design the technical agreement on exchanges between two business partners.
When the collaborative design is done, it is possible to use the model to model generation feature to generate two executable models that implement each partner side. During this generation, some transformations are applied to the generated model in order to respect executable process language constraints. For example collaborative business transactions are converted into WSDL abstract operations.
BPEL4WS is a standard format commonly used in the market. You can recover BPEL4WS code into a business process model using the reverse engineer feature.
The resulting BPEL4WS model can then be generated into another BPM for a specific process engine like Sybase Unwired Orchestrator. You use the model to model generation feature to do so. During this generation, some transformations are also applied to the generated model in order to respect process language constraints. For example, default WSDL operations are built during the BPEL4WS to Sybase Unwired Orchestrator generation.
For more information on the different use cases for using the Sybase WorkSpace Business Process language, see the "Working with Sybase WorkSpace Business Process" chapter.
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