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Separating BPM and SOA Processes : The Model Stack & Design Tips on Separating BPM and SOA

1/17/2012 11:35:37 AM

The Model Stack


The following is an overview of the model stack:

A Reference Architecture

The model stack, has both BPM and SOA pieces ; the SOA component is itself divided into two parts: a Process Integration Engine that executes orchestration processes, and an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) that performs low-level message routing and transformation. This three-layer structure is shown in the following figure:


The model stack supports a distributed architecture in which the activities of client applications and partner services, both internal and external to the organization, are coordinated by orchestration processes. Clients and partners communicate with these processes through an ESB. Internal connections typically use MOM queues to access the bus; external connections use SOAP over HTTP. The orchestration processes, besides coordinating partner activities, also interface with backend systems (databases, mainframes, and so on) and use BPM to delegate manual work to human actors. The next figure illustrates this architecture.


Vendor Offerings

Although there are niche vendors in both SOA and BPM, a few large vendors today-notably TIBCO, BEA, Oracle, and IBM-offer a product stack with the complete set: BPM, Process Integration, and ESB. The following table breaks down each offering.

Vendor BPM Process Integration ESB
TIBCO iProcess BusinessWorks ActiveMatrix
BEA AquaLogic BPM Weblogic Integration AquaLogic Service Bus
Oracle "Fusion" BPA Suite "Fusion" BPEL Process Manager "Fusion" Enterprise Service Bus
IBM Websphere Process Server, FileNet Websphere Process Server, Websphere Interchange Server Websphere Enterprise Service Bus, Websphere Message Broker

Each layer of the stack is inherently process-oriented, which is not at all surprising for the BPM and process integration layers. Even the ESB, it turns out, is powered by small, quick-burst mediation processes that move messages in and out of the stack. In a perfect world, these layers would use a common process language and a common process runtime infrastructure. Processes are processes, whether for human workflow or SOA automation. But in the real world of vendor stacks, architecture is not so tidy. TIBCO's iProcess is entirely different from its BusinessWorks, and BEA's AquaLogic BPM is worlds apart from its Weblogic Integration. If you are proficient with assembling boxes and arrows on one canvas, be prepared to retrain before attempting a similar activity on another canvas.

Not surprisingly, TIBCO and BEA acquired their BPM platform from pure-play vendors: TIBCO from Staffware, and BEA from Fuego. The Oracle and IBM platforms are motley in their own way. Acquisitions, religious wars, old-meets-new, and the geographical dispersion of engineering teams make for diverse toolsets. Still, if a vendor started with a clean slate, and locked its SOA and BPM engineers in a war room, there's no question they would emerge with a unified BPM/SOA system.

Where Does BPEL Fit?

BPEL is a leading standard in the BPM/SOA world and presumably a key part of any vendor's stack. Unexpectedly, vendors cannot agree on where it fits:

  • BPEL is a first-class citizen for Oracle and IBM, but the line between process integration and BPM is fuzzy in those stacks. Is Oracle's BPEL Process Manager for process integration, BPM, or both? In which layer does IBM's Websphere Process Manager-a BPEL engine with a BPEL4People implementation-belong?

  • BEA is a leading author of the BPEL specification, but BPEL is not a first-class citizen in the BEA stack. The process language that Weblogic Integration uses-known as Java Process Definition, or JPD-is very similar in nature to, and influenced the design of, BPEL. Weblogic Integration provides import and export facilities to transform BPEL to or from JPD. Still, BPEL is surprisingly understated in the BEA implementation.

  • For TIBCO, BPEL is suitable for long-running orchestration processes in the process integration layer (as an extension to BusinessWorks). In addition, mediation flows in TIBCO's service bus are represented in a restricted transform-and-route BPEL form. (The graphical editor hides this detail from the developer.) TIBCO also makes prominent use of BPMN (another well-known process standard) as the analyst-friendly language of its BPM modeling tool Business Studio, and it provides a mapping from BPMN to iProcess to move analyst models to executable form. Curiously, TIBCO does not provide what you would expect-a mapping from BPMN to BPEL. Numerous BPMN modeling tools and the BPMN specification itself define a mapping to BPEL, but TIBCO keeps these standards separate: BPMN is for BPM; BPEL is for SOA.


Design Tips on Separating BPM and SOA

Assuming we have the model stack (which supports both BPM and SOA) and use case requirements that call for a process with both BPM and SOA activities, how do we decide how to split the design into BPM and SOA parts, and which part drives the end-to-end flow?

The first step is to tally the required process activities and divide them into two groups: human tasks and automated tasks. If human tasks outnumber automated tasks by a wide margin, a BPM-based solution might be the best choice; if automated tasks win, we are inclined to choose SOA. In the disputes process, as we discover in the next section, the split is nearly even, which makes both approaches feasible.

But there are several other factors to consider. One is the capabilities of the stack. If the SOA part of the target platform is faster, more scalable, more developer-friendly, and more functional than the BPM part, SOA is the clear choice. The reverse can also hold true. Generally:

  • BPM has better process monitoring than SOA.

  • SOA can handle greater message volumes than BPM.

  • Not all SOA implementations support long-running processes.

  • Not all BPM implementations support inbound events from external sources.

  • Most BPM implementations have limited application integration capabilities.

  • Support for control flow process patterns-such as those presented at www.workflowpatterns.com-is often a toss-up. On your platform, BPM might have better support than SOA for, say, cancellation and multiple instances, but SOA might win on deferred choice and synchronization. Decide which patterns you need and determine which part of the stack best supports them.

A final consideration is the interoperability of the two layers. A BPM-based choice is feasible only if BPM can easily call and be called by SOA. An SOA-based choice can be considered only if SOA has a good BPM plugin that allows it to assign, and be notified of the completion of, work.

In this book on SOA, we concede that there are processes that are best controlled by BPM. Sometimes less is more with SOA. But there just as many processes that belong to SOA. A good architecture recognizes that processes are processes, and uses the stack to its fullest to build them properly.

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