IBM BPM Components

IBM BPM Components

At a high level, IBM Business Process Management is comprised of a number of coarse grained components. All these components are nothing but the IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) products. Each component serves for a unique and distinct purposes and are employed at different stages in the development and  operation of an IBM BPM (BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT) solution. IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT downs into these constituent components both aids in the understanding of the product as well as providing a practical differentiation between phases and pieces of operation.

Component – Process Server

These are the first type of Components of IBM BPM. Process Servers are the components/products/engines which run the business processes described by BPDs. During development, the processes run on an instance of a Process Server located at the Process Center. When it comes time to put the applications that have been built in the test and production environments, they will be installed on other Process Server instances. A Process Server is implemented by a WebSphere Application Server (WAS) with the IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT product integrated within it. The IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT run-time consists of IBM written Java product code engineered to conform to and utilize the Java EE framework. For users of IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT Advanced, the Process Server also contains a large set of additional functions including Service Component Architecture (SCA), BPEL processes and mediations (to name but a few).

Component – Process Center

One of the core concepts of IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT is that there is only ever one definition of the solution you are building. This may sound obvious but comparing IBM BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT to other products, we find that those other products have different "representations" and "copies" of the solution being built depending on what is being done. For example, some products store modeling data in one format/location, process development data in a different format/location and monitoring data in yet another format/location. The result of this is that a plethora of different data structures and sources exist with little interoperability between them.