The placement of BPM runtime components in an SOA

Again, thanks to Twitter for alerting me to this: -

The various runtime components within a business process management (BPM) solution have a subtle relationship with the SOA reference architecture. This article looks at how these components relate to the SOA layers in practice. This content is part of the IBM Business Process Management Journal.

Introduction

Although the service-oriented architecture (SOA) reference architecture is intentionally simplistic at a high level it, it holds some surprises when you look more closely at how components really interact. This is especially true in relation to the placement of the core elements of a business process management (BPM) capability.

We will consider some the questions that most commonly arise, such as:

• Is BPM a consumer or provider of services?

• If we choose to create an independent user interface, to what extent should it be decoupled from the BPM runtime?

• How do we retain agility in BPM while adhering to the architectural separation of SOA?

These subtleties are critical when it comes to designing solutions to fully leverage the benefits of both SOA and BPM simultaneously.

The placement of BPM runtime components in an SOA

From one of my IBM UK colleagues, Mr Kim Clark Esq.