Preface

Modeling business processes for SOA and developing end-to-end IT support for these processes have become top IT priorities for many organisation. The SOA approach is based services and on processes. Processes are focused on composition of services and in that sense services become process activities.

Experience has shown that the implementation and the optimization of processes are the most important factors in the success of SOA projects. SOA is so valuable to businesses because it enables process optimization. In order to optimize processes, we need to know which processes are relevant and we have to understand them – something that cannot be done without business process modeling. There is a major problem with this approach – a semantic gap between the process model and the applications.

This book will show you how to bridge this gap. It describes a pragmatic approach to business process modeling using the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and the automatic mapping of BPMN to the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), which is the de-facto standard for executing business processes in SOA. The book will also cover related technologies such as Business Rules Management and Business Activity Monitoring, which play a pivotal role in achieving closed-loop Business Process Management.