Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Sun
Microsystems, Software AG, and Others Collaborate on Extension for Web
Services Business Process Execution Language for Human Interactions
BOSTON--(Business Wire)--
OASIS, the international open standards consortium, has formed a
new technical committee to extend the Web Services Business Processes
Execution Language (WS-BPEL) to support human interactions. The new
OASIS WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Technical Committee
will expand the capabilities of WS-BPEL to support a broad range of
human interaction patterns, allowing for additional modeling of
business processes within the language.
WS-BPEL 2.0, which was approved as an OASIS Standard in 2007,
introduced a model to support automated business processes based on
Web services. The standard is now widely used for orchestrating
machine-to-machine interactions.
"WS-BPEL was not designed for human workflow," noted Jeff
Mischkinsky of Oracle, convenor of the OASIS BPEL4People Technical
Committee. "Nevertheless, we realize that many business processes
comprise a broad range of activities where people are directly
involved. Whether performing tasks, reviewing actions, approving
steps, or entering data, people are a key part of many workflow
scenarios."
BPEL4People will define a new type of basic activity that will
allow human tasks, including their properties and behavior, to be
defined, as well as the operations used to manipulate those tasks. A
BPEL4People coordination protocol will control autonomy and life cycle
of service-enabled human tasks in an interoperable manner.
"BPEL4People demonstrates WS-BPEL's promise of extensibility,"
said James Bryce Clark, directory of standards development at OASIS.
"Being able to represent human interactions as well as automated
service exchanges is a powerful evolutionary step. We expect that
building on WS-BPEL, rather than developing an entirely new
specification, will be most welcomed by the marketplace."
OASIS members will build on version 1.0 of the BPEL4People and
WS-HumanTask specifications, which will be contributed to the
Committee by Adobe, Active Endpoints, BEA, IBM, Oracle and SAP. Other
contributions and changes to these input documents will be accepted
for consideration and evaluated based on technical merit and
conformance to the Committee's charter.
BPEL4People will be offered for implementation on a Royalty-Free
basis. The new technical committee will hold its first meeting by
teleconference on 5 March 2008. Participation remains open to all
companies, non-profit groups, government agencies, academic
institutions, and individuals. Archives of the work will be accessible
to both members and non-members, and OASIS will offer a mechanism for
public comment.
Presentations on BPEL and other SOA-related standards will be the
focus of the upcoming OASIS event, 'Open Standards 2008: Composability
within SOA', which will be held 28 April - 1 May in Santa Clara,
California.
OASIS also recently introduced BPEL XML.org
(http://bpel.xml.org/), an online community gathering place and
information resource for the standard.
Support for BPEL4People
"Active Endpoints looks forward to participating in the OASIS
BPEL4People Technical Committee and contributing to the extension of
BPEL to include human tasks. As one of the authors of BPEL4People, we
very strongly believe that no visual orchestration system is complete
without the ability to flexibly integrate people as part of the
overall application. By formalizing the BPEL4People specifications,
OASIS is ensuring that BPEL itself will continue to be the most
effective way to drive services-based application adoption," said
Chris Keller, founder and vice president of engineering, Active
Endpoints, Inc.
"Adobe is dedicated to creating rich and immersive online and
offline experiences. WS-BPEL Extensions will considerably close the
gap between human behavior and structural business processes and
establish standards for effective process management. Human Task
Enablement extends the ability for organizations to use open-source
Flex to build standards-based applications that are intuitive and
interactive. Adobe looks forward to participating within the newly
formed OASIS Technical Committee and standardizing the
specifications," said Charlton Barreto, senior software architect,
Adobe.
"BEA is pleased that an OASIS technical committee is being formed
to standardize extensions to WS-BPEL 2.0 which are designed to support
human interaction within business processes. This technology can help
deliver significant value to customers and the industry," said Ed
Cobb, vice president of emerging technology and standards at BEA
Systems.
"IBM is very pleased to join with our co-authors on BPEL4People,
Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA, Oracle, and SAP, in forming the OASIS
BPEL4People Technical Committee. This is an important milestone in
providing a common way for vendors to represent the human steps in a
business process based on BPEL. Our customers have told us that it is
critical that their business process management applications be able
to address the diverse activities that people perform, such as review
and delegation, in a standardized way. The BPEL4People Technical
Committee starts the industry on a clear path to an open, widely
adopted industry standard for this important capability," said Karla
Norsworthy, IBM.
"The BPEL4People specification addresses two critical industry
needs: providing a standard workflow language for broad adoption, and
enabling a single base standard (WS-BPEL) to orchestrate both people
and systems. Having supported this architecture for several years in
our Fusion Middleware, Oracle believes its standardization by the
OASIS Technical Committee will accelerate the market adoption of
workflow technology and BPM," said Don Deutsch, vice president,
Standard Strategy and Architecture, Oracle.
"Red Hat is happy to see the emergence of BPEL4People as an OASIS
Technical Committee and intends to contribute actively in this
endeavor," said Mark Little, Director of Standards.
"SAP is pleased to see that OASIS is further enhancing the BPEL
specification and encouraging broader adoption of this technology.
Through BPEL4People, modeling of service-based and human interactions
will be unified, thus driving further adoption of enterprise-class SOA
for critical business applications," said Michael Bechauf, Vice
President, Industry Standards at the Global Ecosystem and Partner
Group, SAP.
"The BPEL4People and related WS-HumanTask specifications fill
major holes in the area of human interaction that existed within the
original WS-BPEL 2.0 specification. These extensions to WS-BPEL 2.0
target the unique needs of complex business process orchestration with
embedded human interactions so that they can more fully support the
'ad hoc' process orchestrations that are critical to the continued
evolution of BPEL-centric BPM. We are pleased to co-submit these
specifications to OASIS and co-sponsor the formation of the
BPEL4People TC. Software AG is committed to open standards as a means
for ensuring interoperability across heterogeneous systems. This is
fundamental to our position as the independent leader in business
infrastructure software globally," said Dr. Peter Kurpick, President
and Chief Product Officer of the webMethods Business Division and
member of the Software AG Executive Board.
"Sun Microsystems is a long-time supporter of and contributor to
WS-BPEL 2.0. Sun supports the standardization of BPEL4People as the
next logical step in the growth of WS-BPEL, bringing work flow
capabilities to BPEL's web service orchestration facilities, and to
our customers. And, as always, we are happy to support this work being
done in the open environment offered by OASIS," said Carl Cargill,
Sun's Director of Corporate Standards.
Additional information:
OASIS BPEL4People Technical Committee
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/bpel4people/
BPEL XML.org
http://bpel.xml.org/
Cover Pages Technology Report
http://xml.coverpages.org/bpel4people.html
Open Standards 2008: Composability within SOA
http://events.oasis-open.org/home/symposium/2008/
About OASIS:
OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) drives the development, convergence, and adoption of open
standards for the global information society. A not-for-profit
consortium, OASIS advances standards for SOA, security, Web services,
documents, e-commerce, government and law, localisation, supply
chains, XML processing, and other areas of need identified by its
members. OASIS open standards offer the potential to lower cost,
stimulate innovation, grow global markets, and protect the right of
free choice of technology. The consortium has more than 5,000
participants representing over 600 organizations and individual
members in 100 countries. http://www.oasis-open.org
OASIS
Carol Geyer, OASIS Director of Communications
+1 978-667-5115 x209 (office)
+1 941-284-0403 (mobile)
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
Copyright Business Wire 2008
