[ebBP] 4/13/2004: DRAFT Working OASIS Symposium Slides for Review

["Monica J. Martin" <Monica.Martin@Sun.COM>]

Everyone,
Attached are the draft slides to discuss Managing Business Processes in 
a Reliable Infrastructure. This brief is the result of much hard work 
and inputs from Sally St. Amand, David Webber, and Zinovy Barch.  Dale 
Moberg and Jean-Jacques Dubray has provided technical guidance as well 
(to me indirectly).  I encourage your comments on this brief and 
recommendations on changes so we can discuss in Monday's meeting, 19 
April 2004.  The slide set is due to IDEAllance/OASIS by COB that day.  
Any comments welcome - try to provide this week if at all practical.

I've attached:

    * .pdf slides
    * .txt file with the notes for the applicable slides

Again, thank you for all those who contributed.


Slide 3
In spite of ebXML Technical Architecture Specification [1] does not clearly define role and functionality of Business Service Interface (BSI), it implies that BSI provides the set of interfaces to the users’ internal business applications for each participant, and supports execution of the Business Processes (Fig.1).  We shall consider BSI as the run time agent(s), which interfaces users’ Internal Business systems, choreographs business processes, provides collaboration between business partners, and provides reasonable level of Quality of Service (Fig. 2).  In turn, Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) is a specification of BSI data model and business logic [2]. XML files, generated from BPSS at design time, could be used as the BSI configuration files for each participant. If we succeed in this endeavor, the robust BPSS will allow us to create generic BSI agent, which will be applicable for any business processes.
Slide 6
The choreography is the sequence of actions and conditions, under which multiple coordinated independent BSI agents exchange business messages in order to perform a task to achieve a business goal.  
Therefore BPSS should provide BSI with the list of such transactions and business logic, which will allow BSI to determine and execute the correct action in giving time and state.  
Slide 12
Scenario Criteria
Multi-party collaboration required.
Roles change during process lifecycle.
Purchasing channels must be unique in a buying cycle to ensure security controls and visibility of particular parties within buying network.
Purchasing and inventory information must be available for process decision-making.
Verification of business messages required for automated or human decision-making.
Slide 13
User Interface Layer
Document Reader/Reporter: This module inserts business documents into the BSI either in structural (XML) or native (MS Word, Fax, Excel, etc.) formats from client’s ERP system; It also provides document output interface for reading any documents from Local Document Archive; 
Status Display: It displays business process status i.e. active, completed and incoming business transactions. 
Manual Console:  This module designated for manual execution of business transaction in case of necessity. It also should be able to test (ping) other parties BSIs availability and be able to provide control transmission of “dummy” document for test purposes.

2. Business process layer
Local Document Archive: It saves documents in BSI for further usage.
Document wrapper/unwrapper: This module will prepare business documents for transmission by creating and adding specific information in the documents header, and by “putting” the document into an envelope. This information will be taken from BPSS, CPA and CPP. For incoming documents this module will retrieve the document(s) from an envelope and place it into the Local Document Archive.
Process Engine:  The module is responsible for execution of business process based upon process flow description, such as sequence of the business transactions and decision making logic (usage of BPEL-like language is anticipated).  
Control Document:  This module contains set of predefined documents to test messaging sending capabilities of BSI.
Ping: - is a utility, which could be executed from Manual Console and may be used to request a response from remote BSI.

3. Messaging Service:
Message Listener: The module looks for incoming messages and passes them to the message retriever.
Message Builder/Retriever:  The module is responsible for adding messaging specific information to the transaction document’s header and pass the document to the message sender (for out coming document). It also removes message specific information from document header for incoming documents, and sends message level acknowledgment – “I’ve got your message at such and such time. I don’t know yet what it’s talking about but I’ve got it”.
Message Sender: The main task of this module is to send messages according their destination and record this event in a log file.

reliable-infrast-ebbp-oasis-symposium-draft-mm2-041304.pdf