BPMN

Draft

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a workflow. BPMN was developed by Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) (Wikipedia).

“The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) specification provides a graphical notation for specifying business processes in a Business Process Diagram (BPD).[3] The objective of BPMN is to support business process management for both technical users and business users by providing a notation that is intuitive to business users yet able to represent complex process semantics. The BPMN specification also provides a mapping between the graphics of the notation to the underlying constructs of execution languages, particularly BPEL4WS. (Business Process Modeling Notation, retrieved jan 6 2009).”

See also: The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), an executable XML language. Most (?) BPMN tools can compile drawings into executable BPEL and other XML formats in addition.

History and versions

• BPMN 2.0 RFP: Request for Proposals for version 2.0 of BPMN (2008,-)
• BPMN 1.1: OMG Specification, February, 2008
• BPMN 1.0: OMG Final Adopted Specification, February 6, 2006
• BPMN 1.0: May 3, 2004 Draft Specification

The BPMN language

According to Wikipedia, BPEL has four categories of elements:

Flow Objects

Events, Activities, Gateways

Connecting Objects

Sequence Flow, Message Flow, Association

Swimlanes

Pool, Lane

Artifacts (Artefacts)

Data Object, Group, Annotation

BPMN version 2.0

The new revision of BPMN, 2.0 has more than 50 symbols in its full set. In other words, it is a very complex language.

Examples

BPMN discussion model. Source: Erik Wilde, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), Slides, UC Berkeley iSchool

Tools

There seem to exist some free tools (none tested so far)

Free (totally or somewhat)

• BPMN plugin for Eclipse
• Oryx, an academic Open Source project to create BPMN 2.0 diagrams, EPCs or Petri nets online.
• OMII-BPEL, Modelling, monitoring, executing scientific workflows with BPEL

Commerical

• Intalo BPM, includes the interesting Social BPM that combines the BPM design tool with a social portal building framework.

This list is by no means complete, see for the moment:

• BPMN Implementors and Quotes (best link, at OMG)
• Tools (BPM forum, not very complete)

Bibliography and links

Links

Overviews

• Business Process Modeling Notation (Wikipedia)

Web sites

• BPMN FAQ
• BPMN Information Home Page
• BPM Research Website by Michael zur Muehlen (blog)
• BPMS Watch by Bruce Silver (blog)

Posters

• BPMN 1.1 Poster
• BPMN 2.0 Poster (Printable A1 PDF for various languages)

Bibliography

• White, Stephen A. (2004). Introduction to BPMN, IBM.
• White, Stephen A. (2004). Mapping BPMN to BPEL Example, IBM PDF
• Silver, Bruce (2009), BPMN Method and Style, Cody-Cassidy Press, ISBN 0982368100 (author's book home page).