Business Process Management (BPM) provides a process-centric paradigm for developing and executing enterprise software applications. It enables the design, analysis, optimization, and automation of business processes. Recently, companies adopt BPM for changing business processes, and implement Business Process Management Systems to improve the effectiveness of their business. Although BPM, especially, in the scope of workflow and transaction management, has been actively studied in the past few years, the design and implementation of Business Process Management Systems on the Service-Oriented Architecture instantiated by Web services needs refreshed attention in a wider scope including process modeling and monitoring. This paper presents a high-level architecture of a Business Process Management System with Web services, and discusses the requirements and the functionalities of its components. It also briefly reviews the current work on developing BPM solutions using Web services centered on an emerging standard called BPEL4WS. Finally, it discusses some of the related research problems whose solution is critical for seamless, effective BPM with Web services.
By: Juhnyoung Lee, Jeaha Yang, Jen-Yao Chung
Published in: RC22624 in 2002
LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOTICE:
This Research Report is available. This report has been submitted for publication outside of IBM and will probably be copyrighted if accepted for publication. It has been issued as a Research Report for early dissemination of its contents. In view of the transfer of copyright to the outside publisher, its distribution outside of IBM prior to publication should be limited to peer communications and specific requests. After outside publication, requests should be filled only by reprints or legally obtained copies of the article (e.g., payment of royalties). I have read and understand this notice and am a member of the scientific community outside or inside of IBM seeking a single copy only.
Questions about this service can be mailed to reports@us.ibm.com .