Business process management: past, now, future
"World Computer" IT.ICXO.com (Date: 2004-04-27 09:48)
Information technology has changed the business process between enterprises and enterprises. More and more workflows runs on process model-driven information systems such as workflow management system Staffware, corporate resource planning systems SAP and BANN, as well as special information systems. It is difficult to imagine enterprise information systems that have nothing to do with the process. Despite the use of information technology to help business processes, the management has already been admitted to consult consultants and software developers, but a more basic approach is ignored. Up to the 1990s, researchers began researching the basis of the business process management system. There are a lot of problems to be solved. In addition, new technologies such as web services (Web Services) have also taken new issues. Trend In order to discuss workflow management in a suitable environment, look at its development trend. In the 1960s, the information system was based on a small operating system, and the functions were limited. These systems are mainly composed of specific applications because they have universal, no domain-related software. Since then, there are software products that provide new functions every year. Today's operating system provides more features than the 1960s, and the database management system provides custom applications. This trend leads to the integration of the complex software system from the focus program. The challenge is no longer programming for a single module, but connects the software modules of the four levels to work together. Another trend is the transfer from data to the process. The 70s and 1980s is the method of data-driven, which is mainstream, and information technology is mainly used as access information, and the results of data modeling becomes the initial point of information system construct. The modeling of business processes is often overlooked, and the process has to adapt to information technology. The development of business process reorganization and other management theories reflects the importance of the process, making system engineers more tended to driver. The most recent trend is to design and design the way to redesign and organize growth. Due to the ubiquitination of the Internet and its standards, the information system is also changing. There are very few systems build from head. Some applications are often used in new systems, making software development more dynamism. The business process management system is a process-oriented information system that transcends a single task automation. Such as workflow management system Staffware, MQSeries, and COSA, case processing system Flower. It is worth noting that the main ERP system also provides a module for workflow management. SAP, BAAN, PeopleSoft, Oracle and JD Edwards workflow engine can be considered integrated business process management system. The idea of managing the management of business processes into a separate component is consistent with the above three trends. The business process management system avoids the transition from the program to the application assembly in customized applications. Also supports flow-oriented, process re-design, and Organic GROWTH. The current workflow management system can be used to integrate existing applications, supporting only the process changes only. Workflow Management System Although Workflow Management Alliance (WFMC) has made great efforts, the workflow management system based on different examples (PARADIGMS) is still using multiple languages and concepts. Most products use special instead of a tool-independent language. Some workflow management systems are based on Petri, but increase product-related extensions and restrictions. Other systems use a completely different mechanism. For example, IBM's MQSeries workflow uses active and passive threads, not TOKEN. The difference in different tools is obvious. One of the reasons why the workflow specification cannot reach a consensus is the diversity of business processes. The lack of common organization "theory" and standard business process modeling concepts explain the rationality of the difference between workflow language. More importantly, there are more comparison of different workflow products to promote DISSEMINATION, rather than accusations for workflow language.
A new system for comparing and evaluating workflows is developed in the joint efforts of Eindhoven University of Technology and Queensland University of Technology. This framework considers more objective evaluation of workflow management systems based on a comprehensive mode set. We have collected approximately 30 workflow modes and take 20 compared 15 Workflow Management systems (Cosa, Visual Workflow, Staffware, Ververt, ChangeEngine, SAP R / 3 Workflow, Eastman And Flower). If you need more information, please visit http://www.tm.tue.nl/it/research/patterns. Network Service Components Languages have two trends in the field of e-commerce, which triggered Achieve opportunities and stresses that automate cross-organizational business processes. A trend is the driving force of technology, which is produced in XML-based standards and Internet enable technologies. Another trend is to improve process efficiency from a business perspective. After the network bubble, the potential of Internet technology has become tightly utilized by automating business processes across enterprises. The goal of network services is to use XML and Internet integration to publish, locate and call applications on the web. A typical example of a network service is the Galieo system, which connects more than 42,000 travel agents to 37 car rental companies, 47,000 hotels and 350 tourist contractors. In order to truly integrate cross-enterprise processes, simply exchange of simple communication with standard messages and protocols cannot meet demand. Business Exchange requires an intuitive process model drive for a long time (long-running) interaction process. This requires Web Services component language, such as BPEL4WS, WSFL, XLANG, WSCI, and BPML. The development of network service component language is mainly driven by software providers such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, BEA, SAP, and INTALIO, and there have been many functional standards. When considering these standards more carefully, they are obviously based on existing products, such as WSFL basically the replica of IBM's FlowMark / MQ Series workflow language. Many software vendors participate is often a compromise between different perspectives, such standards lead to inaccurate and unnecessary complexity. If the XPDL of the Workflow Alliance makes software suppliers have their own interpretation criteria (so that standards become useless). BPEL4WS integrates two standards of WSFL and XLANG, making this language complicated. Through these observations, it is useful to find some objective measures for comparing network service components. For these languages, workflow research can be utilized. One way to compare BPEL4WS, BPML, WSCI, XLANG, and WSFL is to use the workflow mode on http://www.tm.tue.nl/it/research/patterns. Recently, on the basis of 20 basic workflow patterns, this site increases the evaluation of multiple languages such as BPEL4WS, BPML, WSCI, XLANG, and WSFL. Conclusion BPMI is one of the organizations that propose network service components. BPMI.org defines an open specification such as business process modeling language and business process query language BPQL (Business Process Query Language), which uses upcoming enterprise process management system BPMS (Business Process Management Systems) Promote the standardization management of e-commerce processes, just like SQL use existing database management systems to realize standardized management of enterprise data. A network service standard similar to SQL is ambitious goal.
