Business Process Modeling Language: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:14, 18 November 2008

Revision as of 20:21, 29 November 2008

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'''Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)''' is confusing term for an [[IT]] [[meta-language]] for the modeling of computerized processes, not actual [[business process]]es. This language acompanies XML as a meta-language for the modeling of data. BPML was a ''proposed'' language, but now the [[Business Process Management Initiative|BPMI]] has dropped support for this in favor of [[Business Process Execution Language|BPEL4WS]]. BPMI took this decision when it was acquired by OMG in order to gain access to its popular specification, BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). This notation was useful to OMG in order to enrich UML with process notation.

{{Essay-like|date=July 2008}}

'''Business Process Modeling Language (BPML)''' is confusing term for an [[IT]]a [[meta-language]] for the modeling of computerizedbusiness processes, notjust actual [[business process]]es. This language acompaniesas XML asis a meta-language for the modeling of business data. BPML was a ''proposed'' language, but now the [[Business Process Management Initiative|BPMI]] has dropped support for this in favor of [[Business Process Execution Language|BPEL4WS]]. BPMI took this decision when it was acquired by OMG in order to gain access to its popular specification, BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation). This notation was useful to OMG in order to enrich UML with process notation.

BPML, a superset of BPEL, was implemented by early stage vendors, such as Intalio Inc., but emcumbants such as IBM and Microsoft could not implement BPML in their existing workflow and integration engine implementations (BizTalk, Websphere etc.). Hence, they pushed for a simpler language, BPEL. Today, open source implementations of BPML still exceed the capability of these commercial products. This led some to say that BPML versus BPEL was a case of VHS versus Betamax. The analogy is not quite correct. For VHS and Betamax both let you watch video - even if one implementation won out. That is not the case with BPML and BPEL. BPML was designed as a formally complete language, able to model any process, and, via a BPMS, deployed as an executable software process without generation of any software code. This is not possible with BPEL, since BPEL is not a complete process language. To illustrate this, note that BPEL is often used in conjunction with Java to fill in the "missing" semantics. In addition, BPEL is often tied to proprietary implementations of workflow or integration broker engines. Whereas, BPML was designed, and implemented, as a pure concurrent and distributed processing engine.