System and method for integrating a business process management system with an enterprise service bus

• US 8,185,916 B2
• Filed: 11/06/2007
• Issued: 05/22/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Toussaint, Alexandre, Rubio, Eduardo Carlos, Veiga, Paulo Gustavo, Rodriguez, Ignacio Gabriel
• Primary Examiner(s): Truong, Lechi
• Application Number:
  US11/935,964
• Publication Number:
  US 20090006167A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,659 Days
• Field of Search: 719/328, 719/330
• US Class Current: 719/328
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0633 Workflow analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/087 Inventory or stock management, e.g. order filling, procurement or balancing against orders

Abstract

A system and method are described for integrating a business process management (BPM) system with an enterprise service bus. The BPM system is used to model business processes which contain a set of activities linked by transitions. The BPM system is used to define, publish, deploy and execute the processes in a distributed computing environment. The service bus is used to manage web services and perform routing and transformation of messages between the web services. A transport is used to describe each process defined by the BPM system as a web service on the service bus and provide the ability to connect the BPM component to the enterprise service bus. This allows each of the processes to be exposed as a web service by injecting data retrieved from the process definition into the enterprise service bus. Furthermore, the processes defined in BPM can consume web services from the service bus.

Claims

1. A system for integrating business processes with web services in a distributed computing environment, said system comprising:

a computer, wherein the computer includes a non-transitory computer readable storage medium;

a business process management component used to model and define one or more business processes stored on the non-transitory computer readable storage medium, wherein each business process includes a set of activities linked by transitions, and wherein each activity represents a step of a particular process, and wherein at least one activity in the set of activities of said particular business process invokes a proxy service to obtain access to an external service;

an enterprise service bus that manages one or more web services and performs routing and transformation of messages between said one or more web services;

an application programming interface that connects said business process management component to the enterprise service bus via a management extension;

a transport that describes each business process as a web service to connect said business process management component to said enterprise service bus, wherein each of said one or more business processes is exposed as a web service on said enterprise service bus, and wherein the external service invoked by the particular business process is available as a web service on the enterprise service bus; and

wherein the application programming interface uses one or more managed beans of the management extension to perform operations on each web service.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the business process management component consumes said one or more web services residing on the enterprise service bus such that said one or more processes invoke said one or more web services of the enterprise service bus.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein at least one activity of a process defined by the business process management component invokes a web service on the enterprise service bus.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a plurality of heterogeneous clients, one or more of said clients accessing said enterprise service bus in order to invoke said one or more processes deployed on the business process management component as a web service on said enterprise service bus.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

an application programming interface that connects said business process management component to the enterprise service bus via Java Management Extensions (JMX) and uses one or more MBeans of said JMX to perform operations on said enterprise service bus.

6. The system of claim 1 wherein said enterprise service bus further includes:

at least one proxy service that is an intermediary web service hosted locally on the enterprise service bus such that clients exchange messages with the proxy service instead of directly with external web services.

7. The system of claim 6 wherein said business process management component includes

a catalog of compiled software modules usable with other components or programs and wherein:

a representation of said proxy service is generated in the catalog such that said proxy service can be invoked from within the process of the business process management component.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein said business process management component, acting as a consumer, authenticates against the enterprise service bus by introspecting user name token security policy assertions attached to a web services description language (WSDL) document of said web service.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein authentication is provided for said business process management component acting as a provider, by configuring said one or more processes exposed as a web service to support a user name token profile.

10. A method for integrating a business process management system with an enterprise service bus, said method comprising:

generating one or more business processes, wherein each business process includes a set of activities linked by transitions, wherein each activity represents a step of a particular process;

invoking, by an activity of said particular process, a proxy service to obtain access to an external service;

providing an application programming interface that connects said business process management component to the enterprise service bus via a management extension;

generating a transport that describes each business process as a web service on an enterprise service bus, wherein the enterprise service bus manages one or more web services and performs routing and transformation of messages between said one or more web services, and wherein each of said one or more business processes is exposed as a web service on said enterprise service bus;

injecting data retrieved from the external service invoked by the particular business process into the enterprise service bus, and wherein the external service is available as a web service on the enterprise service bus;

publishing said one or more business processes and external service as a web service on the enterprise service bus; and

wherein the application programming interface uses one or more managed beans of the management extension to perform operations on each published web service.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein generating the process definition further includes:

introspecting one or more web services residing on the enterprise service bus; and

consuming said one or more web services by invoking the one or more web services of the enterprise service bus from an activity within said process.

12. The method of claim 10 wherein publishing said process as a web service on the enterprise service bus further includes:

exporting one or more objects from the enterprise service bus and using said one or more objects as a customized template;

packaging said one or more objects as a Java archive (JAR) file; and

uploading and importing said JAR file into the enterprise service bus.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

accessing, by one or more clients, said enterprise service bus in order to invoke the process as a web service on said enterprise service bus.

14. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

providing an application programming interface that connects said business process management system to the enterprise service bus via Java Management Extensions (JMX) and uses one or more MBeans of said JMX to perform operations on said enterprise service bus.

15. The method of claim 10 wherein said enterprise service bus further includes:

at least one proxy service that is an intermediary web service hosted locally on the enterprise service bus such that clients exchange messages with the proxy service instead of directly with external web services.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

maintaining a catalog of compiled software modules usable with other components or programs;

and generating a representation of said proxy service in the catalog such that said proxy service is invocable from within the process.

17. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

authenticating the business process management system against the enterprise service bus by introspecting user name token security policy assertions attached to a web services description language (WSDL) document of said web service.

18. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

providing authentication for said business process management system by configuring said one or more processes exposed as a web service to support a user name token profile.

19. A non-transitory computer readable medium carrying one or more sequences of instructions for integrating a business process management system with an enterprise service bus, which instructions, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out the steps of:

generating one or more business processes, wherein each business process includes a set of activities linked by transitions, wherein each activity represents a step of a particular process;

invoking, by an activity of said particular process, a proxy service to obtain access to an external service;

providing an application programming interface that connects said business process management component to the enterprise service bus via a management extension;

generating a transport that describes each business process as a web service on an enterprise service bus, wherein the enterprise service bus manages one or more web services and performs routing and transformation of messages between said one or more web services, and wherein each of said one or more business processes is exposed as a web service on said enterprise service bus;

injecting data retrieved from the external service invoked by the particular business process into the enterprise service bus, and wherein the external service is available as a web service on the enterprise service bus;

publishing said one or more business processes and external service as a web service on the enterprise service bus; and

wherein the application programming interface uses one or more managed beans of the management extension to perform operations on each published web service.