Business Process Modelling Language Desirable Features

[Former Member]

Hi All,

It will be quite interesting to see what features the BPX community would want to be in the “Visual” Business Process Modelling cum programming language which on one end use self-contained applications that use Web services as activities that implement business functions and on the other has interactions with other J2EE like web components .

For example I would like to see something developed by SAP where the Business Process mapping can be done with a strict protocol in ARIES so that applications can be built in the Visual composer and the BPX can visually do the one or more of the following

1. On Screen “chain End Chain ” valdiation

2. Loop conditions

3. Branching conditions

4. Variable initialization

5. Web service message preparation

The idea being the BPX can generate a running prototype for pattern based processes through grahhical interfaces and unless something really typical needs to be done, the coding can be eliminated.

Taking an example:

On a simple sales order if the stock is not adequate a purchase order needs to be fired.

The Business process mapping of the same can be done in ARIES where some available components (business objects like sale order) from R3 etc are available for modeling.

If this process is to be web enabled then one can use the business process modeling to develop a quick application in Visual Composer where one can use ESA for Sale Order as a Model and build screens based on that. The screen flow can also be built in Visual Composer to take you to through the various tabs.

The data flow across the various tabs also can be done through the component controller and the BPX should be able to map that visually.

The business event (Stock < Sale order quantity ) can be handled through a branching condition and web service message preparation to either generate a email message or fire a purchase order (handled in XI and exposed in one common place of the Business Process modeling Tool).

Marilyn : thanks for the offer of acting as a interface between the SAP development team and some of us with the wishlist. I would certainly love to be involved in the epochal development

[Former Member]

Why leaving the tool? Why ARIS and VC and CAF and many more different tools?

I would prefer a tool that gives me - depending from the user - different flavors and views of my model. A tool that in one flavor allows me to define the process on a higher level, then in another flavor allows me to implement the application(s) of the process in a non-coding approach and then a flavor that allows me to pimp the application(s) with a coding approach.

All three flavors are working on the very same model. The different flavors immediately see the changes done by other flavors. A kind of realtime modelling.

The tool itself is not necessarily a single-environment approach, but can have one flavor running in the browser, the other one in a locally installed IDE. But still all of them use the same terminology. A data service here ,is a data service there, Business Object here is a Business Object there (and not a bean or a class or entity service etc.). That also would allow to have the different modeling users naturally move between the flavors, with a hard core programmer also being able to move to the Business Process Modeling tool, and the BPX also being able to write a small conversion routine.

Perhaps the proper term is "BP & App Suite", which serves all types of modelers involved: Business Process Modelers, Business Process Experts, Developers.

In the SAP world these tools could be: ARIS, Visual Composer, DevStudio/ABAP Workbench/.NET.

Today this is not the case: we have more than 200 tools (and we say we are not a tools company) and not really an exchange of models between those tools. Not to mention the different terminology...

[Former Member]

Now this is really really interesting...Mario...Thanks for sharing your vision....

At first it seemed to me that you read my mind.

In the General Forum of BPX a couple of days before I had penned similar idea of a having different views for a tool comprising of ARIS and VC where both the BPX and the developer can work out of the common tool in different views with the unexpressed idea of realtime modelling.

Needless to say if "BP & App Suite" ( nice term) were to be developed it will completely transform the world of IT.

Are you privy to SAP's vision on the same ?

It will be intriguing to know what their plans are.

The task is staggering but so worth undertaking.