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Business process management (BPM) is a key concern for both business and IT people, although many are confused as to what exactly BPM is and how to implement it. The confusion is compounded by the many claims vendors make about BPM standards. Many currently focus on WS-BPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language – usually shortened to BPEL). To help them our report entitled ‘BPEL: not quite there yet’ provides an overview of what BPEL is and how it is evolving.

However, it provides only a partial picture of the current situation; it is not possible to understand the impact that BPEL will have on the BPM market without understanding the wider BPM standards context and its evolution. At that level, things are still in a remarkable state of flux, which confuses vendors, users, and unfortunately many analysts. It is, nonetheless, not only possible but also necessary to put all the pieces together to understand the big picture and its impact on vendor and user strategies. Hence, this report puts BPEL in a wider perspective and defines how BPEL relates to other standards such as the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN), Unified Modelling Language (UML), Business Process Definition Meta-model (BPDM) and XML Process Definition Language (XPDL).

Table of contents

Key messages

There has been some consolidation
The situation remains fairly complicated and fluid
BPMN may steal BPEL’s thunder
XPDL will not go away anytime soon

BPMN, the ‘other’ key BPM standard

Overview
A young specification with a complicated background
Caught in the web of OMG’s standard efforts
A difficult relationship to BPEL

XPDL, the long distance runner

Modelling tool to execution engine interface
WfMC and XDPL struggle for relevance
XPDL vs. BPDM and BPEL

Appendix – BPMN components

Process types
Process constructs