Work Flow

Human Work flow

Polaris Associates have exposure to BPEL including its extensions like BPEL4People and have implemented human work flow interactions in SOA solutions. We trust Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager solutions for implementing human workflow interactions in the solutions. So we know that BPEL is great at orchestrating the various applications and handling system interactions between these applications, but it is just impossible to discount the human intervention that is needed to ensure seamless flow of the business. An example of complex transaction needing human intervention can be in the banking environment where most transactions involve interactions such as delegation, renewal, escalation, data entries, nomination, or chained execution. Some of the key points to remember in work flow are:

It is critical that your work flow looks at not only the system interactions but also caters for human touch points BPEL however is ideal for work flows that involve complex human interactions. BPEL4People is an extension to BPEL which provides standardization on the explicit inclusion of human tasks in the BPEL processes. In situations without BPEL4People you can use a work flow service to intersperse user interactions with service invocations. This work flow service will interact with BPEL using standard WSDL interfaces.

Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager is deal for implementing work flows in a SOA solution. Some of the benefits of Oracle’s BPEL Process Manager are:

Ease of use Advanced scalability Leverage your existing IT investments