[WSDM] [UPLAT] Flow Definition

["Lipton, Paul C" <Paul.Lipton@ca.com>]

Hi all,

Please find my stab at the what, why, how for flow below. All
comments/suggestions are certainly welcome.

WHAT:
Flow, more often called workflow or workflow management, is the
management of business processes with information technology. By
defining, analyzing, and organizing an organization's resources and
operations, workflow management systems ensure that the right
information reaches the right person or computer application at the
right time.

In the context of Web services, business process management (BPM)
workflow or execution languages support the idea of composing simple
services into more complex processes, typically at the enterprise or B2B
level. These languages are sometimes referred to as Web services
orchestration languages. Typically, such languages allow the definition
of a set of Web services. They also define the coordinated overall
behavior of the Web services that pertain to that process, which is
itself exposed as a Web service. Such coordination includes, but may not
be limited to, constructs for the identification of partners, message
correlation, fault detection and compensating activities, parallel and
serial execution of services, and so on. 

There are many examples of such orchestration languages including OASIS
WSBPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and BPML (Business Process
Markup Language). The WSBPEL language enjoys the support of many leading
software vendors. The composite service and participating service define
their interfaces to each other using WSDL and WS-Policy. An example
might be an association between a retailer and a credit verification
service.


WHY?
Management solutions may be required to execute complex operations as a
result of certain observed metrics in order to maintain specified
service levels. Web services orchestration languages may be useful tools
allowing Web services management providers to enable more complex and
meaningful actions to be taken as a result of observations.

Also, it may be necessary for this committee to consider extensions to
the manageability of a Web service exposed by a business process engine
to properly and consistently monitor and control composite Web services.
For example, it might be possible to identify to the management system
the current session of a process, what subordinate Web services are in
flight, if the process is in a fault condition, and much more.

HOW?
It is recommended that further work be done to explore possible
extensions to MOWS for composite Web services. Since composite Web
services are themselves Web services, it may be out of scope to consider
how a management system might invoke these services, as existing
standards are already sufficient.

Thanks in advance,
Paul


Paul Lipton
Technology Strategist, Office of the CTO
Computer Associates
P: +1 908 874-9479
F: +1 908 874-9178
E: paul.lipton@ca.com