This page sketches the current standards in the field of workflow and business process management.  JBoss is a member of the JSR207 (Process Definition for Java), JSR208 (Java Business Integration) and the OASIS WS-BPEL technical committee.

JCP

JSR208 Java Business Integration

The java standardisation effort for specifying an enterprise service bus environment.

JSR207 Process Definition for Java

The java standardisation effort for specifying business processes.

OASIS

WS-BPEL

The Web Services Business Process Execution Language is the cooperative merging of WSFL and XLANG for Web services orchestration, workflow, and composition. Initially authored by a small charter of five vendors in the IT industry, it is currently under standardization at OASIS.

WS-BPEL superseded WSFL and XLANG

The SOA Reference Model

• http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=soa-rm

• http://www.looselycoupled.com/opinion/2006/nicku-why-arch0104.html

• http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/04/soa_reference_model.html

ebXML BPSS

The eBusiness Transition Working Group carries forward the definition of workflow conversation and orchestration in the Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) layer of ebXML, which defines many protocols and layers for XML-based e-business.

Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)

WfMC reference model

WfMC XPDL

WfMC's XML grammar for specifying process definitions.

Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI)

Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN)

Blogs:

• Does BPMN Belong to BPEL?, by Bruce Silver

• One notation to rule them all, by Bruce Silver

• What's up at OMG, by Frank McCabe

• Semantics of BPMN, by Frank McCabe

• The BPMN-XPDL-BPEL value chain, by Keith Swenson

• Throw Out the Diagram?, by Keith Swenson

• The Promise of Unified Process Modeling and Implementation, by Jesper Joergensen

• The 3 part 'Spreadsheet and BPM' series, by David Ogren

Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM)

Blogs:

• BPM Think Tank Day 1: BPDM, by Sandy Kemsley

• What's up at OMG, by Frank McCabe

BPML

Previous initiative for a service orchestration by BPMI, obsoleted and replaced by BPEL.

Object Management Group (OMG)

OMG's Workflow Management Facility

Corba IDL interface based on WfMC XPDL.

State Chart XML (SCXML)

• Apache implementation

W3C

Web Services Conversation Language (WSCL)

W3C's Web Services Conversation Language: A submission by Hewlett-Packard to the W3C, it allows defining the abstract interfaces of Web services (that is, the business level conversations or public processes supported by a Web service), the XML documents being exchanged, and the sequencing of those documents.

Links

• Don't go with the flow: Web services composition standards exposed

• SourceIBM workflow introduction article

Other BPM standards overviews

• http://www.ebizq.net/hot_topics/bam/features/5297.html?&pp=1