Essential Business Process Modeling (Paperback)

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Product Description

Ten years ago, groupware bundled with email and calendar applications helped track the flow of work from person to person within an organization. Workflow in today's enterprise means more monitoring and orchestrating massive systems. A new technology called Business Process Management, or BPM, helps software architects and developers design, code, run, administer, and monitor complex network-based business processesBPM replaces those sketchy flowchart diagrams that business analysts draw on whiteboards with a precise model that uses standard graphical and XML representations, and an architecture that allows it converse with other services, systems, and users.

Sound complicated? It is. But it's downright frustrating when you have to search the Web for every little piece of information vital to the process. "Essential Business Process Modeling" gathers all the concepts, design, architecture, and standard specifications of BPM into one concise book, and offers hands-on examples that illustrate BPM's approach to process notation, execution, administration and monitoring.

Author Mike Havey demonstrates standard ways to code rigorous processes that are centerpieces of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which defines how networks interact so that one can perform a service for the other. His book also shows how BPM complements enterprise application integration (EAI), a method for moving from older applications to new ones, and Enterprise Service BUS for integrating different web services, messaging, and XML technologies into a single network. BPM, he says, is to this collection of services what a conductor is to musicians in an orchestra: it coordinates their actions in theperformance of a larger composition.

"Essential Business Process Modeling" teaches you how to develop examples of process-oriented applications using free tools that can be run on an average PC or laptop. You'll also learn about BPM design patterns and best practices, as well as some underlying theory. The best way to monitor processes within an enterprise is with BPM, and the best way to navigate BPM is with this valuable book.

About the Author

Michael Harvey is an architect of several major BPM applications and author of magazine articles on BPM and process-oriented applications. In addition to being interested in the foundational concepts of BPM, Michael has spent much of his career working for companies that sell BPM product solutions (BEA with Weblogic Integration and IBM with Websphere Business Integration).

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596008430
• ISBN-13: 978-0596008437
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #421,131 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars what he says doesn't work does, what he says does doesn't, June 8, 2006

By	gottahaveajava (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

Gregor Hohpe should have read past the first 100 pages. This book is good on theory, poor on practice (does that remind you of any other SOA book?).
The examples Havey provides of "non-trivial" systems in the back are, in fact, quite trivial. What's worse is that when he ventures into the territory of "advanced" features, he gets lost. For example, on p.270, he provides an eventHandlers section, but comments it out saying that it doesn't work. I was able to get it to work as written with just a minor tweak, but he slags off the vendor instead (p.284) and proposes an awkward hack for a workaround (p.277). Then, on p.308, he presents us with a piece of parallelism that depends for its success on the use of a correlationSet. This is supposed to be clever, but is, in fact, just poor programming practice. Not only that, but it doesn't work! It can't possibly, not the way it's written. He just sent it off to the publisher without testing. We're not talking about simple syntax errors here... this is a fundamental conceptual flaw in what he's proposing. Pretty basic stuff for him to be stubbing his toe on.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ephemera, not essentials, November 12, 2005

By	Michael Schuerig (Bonn, Deutschland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you go by this book, the essentials of Business Process Modeling consist of knowing a bewildering multitude of languages and (industry) standards. Process theory is covered on the surface. There's a chapter on patterns whose presentation has very little in common with the established patterns form and where it is at least questionable if they really live up to pattern status beyond simply being modeling idioms. The biggest drawback, however, is that this book hardly teaches anything about actually modeling business processes. By comparison, imagine a book on software design that introduces the various UML diagrams and the tools of the day -- but stops short of saying a thing about actually doing software design. No doubt, there's a place for books on notations, standards, and tools. But don't confuse those with the essentials of a field. When modeling business processes, analyzing and understanding them comes first, expressing them in some notation comes much latter. Unfortunately, Havey doesn't touch the first part at all.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!, January 14, 2006

By	John R. Vacca "Tech Write Independent Reviewer" (Pomeroy, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Are you a software architect or developer who intends to build solutions that feature or use business process modeling (BPM)? If you are, this book is for you. Author Michael Havey, has written an outstanding book that provides BPM concepts, standards, and substantial examples of the technology in action.

Havey, begins examining what BPM is not and discusses its benefits. Next, the author develops a model BPM architecture, and discusses the main pieces of a good BPM application, the design of each piece, and which standards are adopted. Then, he provides a tour of the Pi Calculas, Petri nets, state machines, and UML activity diagrams, and why they matter. The author continues by including a detailed look at the 20 process patterns identified by some of the leading BPM theorists or better known as P4. In addition, he provided a detailed look at BPEL; the BPMI specifications; the WfMC; web services choreography; and, the OMG's model-driven approach, BPSS, XLANG, and WSFL. The author also provides a detailed look at BPEL, the leading BPM standard. Then, the author examines BPMI and its two standards: BPML and BPMN. Next, he presents an overview of the main offerings of the WfMC: the reference model, WAPI, WfXML, and XPDL. Next, the author examines the W3C's work in choreography. Then, he discusses four process languages that are too important not to mention. The author continues by illustrating a fully functional working example of a BPEL insurance claim processing application based on the Oracle BPEL Process Manager product, including how to incorporate human workflow into an otherwise automated process. Finally, the author develops another working example, a central message broker application that manages system communications for a company's employee benefits.

This excellent book assumes the reader is comfortable with or has had some exposure to web services and XML, including XML Schema Definition (XSD) and Xpath. Along the way, this book introduces design patterns and best practices specific to BPM, as well as some underlying theory.