INTRODUCING SOA AND WORKFLOW MODELING TO NON-TECHNICAL STUDENTS

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INTRODUCING SOA AND WORKFLOW MODELING TO
NON-TECHNICAL STUDENTS

• Bruce J. Neubauer
• University of South Florida

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Paper is intended to be a contribution to
Pedagogy and to MIS

• Generalist managers need to understand some
  implications of software engineering.
• Programmers increasingly have reason to
  understand business processes.
• Convergent engineering is the concurrent design
  of software applications and the business
  processes supported. See David Taylor.

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Familiar Benefits of Modular Design of Software
Applications

• Divide and conquer approach to complexity
• Facilitates coordination of team members
• Project easier to document and comprehend
• Opportunities for code reuse
• Application easier to maintain

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Traditional Distributed Applications

• Remote procedure calls across local networks
• Calls to DBMSs within organizations.
• CORBA
• DCOM

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CORBA Standards

• Source Wikipedia.com

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Web Services Standards

• Source Wikipedia.com

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Web Services Standards

• Built on Internet protocols
• Facilitate creation of distributed applications
  for the Internet and intranets
• Generally do not hold state
• Tend to be slow because of overhead required by
  use of SOAP and XML
• Used to implement Service Oriented Architectures

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Service-oriented Architecture (SOA)

• Distributed systems in which some of the modules
  of software are Web Services
• Involves the concept of SERVICES, that is not
  necessarily intuitive to either programmers or to
  business analysts

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Service-oriented Architecture (SOA)

• As I understand it, the design goal is not only
  to design the software code, but to integrate the
  design of business processes into the design of
  the software code.
• Blurs the distinction between (business) analysis
  and design
• The goal is convergent engineering as envisioned
  by David Taylor

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• Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) is a
  meta-language for the modeling of business
  processes, just as XML is a meta-language for the
  modeling of business data. BPML was a proposed
  language, that has been dropped in favor of
  BPEL4WS.
• Source Wikipedia.com

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Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

• BPEL's focus on modern business processes,
• BPEL uses Web services
• BPEL is an orchestration language
• Supports programming in the large

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Orchestration and Choreography
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Workflow Design
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What software permits visual modeling of business
processes and outputs BPEL? AquaLogic (formerly
FuegoBPM)
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The Interface is Intuitive
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• Business Process Change A Manager's Guide to
  Improving, Redesigning, and Automating Processes
  (2002)

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Simple Business Process Model
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Convergent Engineering

• We are designing both business processes and the
  software that automates processes
• We define Roles, Rules and Activities
• We identify unconditional and conditional paths
  between activities
• We identify sub processes to address complexity

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Convergent Design

• Who are the actors (roles) in this business
  process?
• What activies must be performed in what order?

• Under what circumstances must conditional paths
  be possible?
• What might we outsource using Web Services?

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Web Services and SOA

• An activity can be implemented as a Web service
  and outsourced beyond the focal organization.
• A Web service may be used to tap into part of the
  functionality of a legacy system, within or
  outside of a focal organization.

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Business Process Using Multiple Web Services

• Verify customers credit
• Verify history of trade in vehicle
• Get three finance offers
• Calculate license plate fee
• Notify insurance company

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Conclusions

• There is something important here.
• BizTalk Server, orchestration, choreography of
  Web Services, convergent engineering
• Service Oriented Architecture
• On my first effort to teach this, I found the to
  actually do the design of business processes.
• The BEA software got in the way of learning.