The Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI) has developed a standard Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). The primary goal of BPMN is to provide a notation that is readily understandable by all business users, from the business analysts that create the initial drafts of the processes, to the technical developers responsible for implementing the technology that will perform those processes, and finally, to the business people who will manage and monitor those processes. Thus, BPMN creates a standardized bridge for the gap between the business process design and process implementation.
Another goal, but no less important, is to ensure that XML languages designed for the execution of business processes, such as BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services), can be visualized with a business-oriented notation.
This specification defines the notation and semantics of a Business Process Diagram (BPD) and represents the amalgamation of best practices within the business modeling community. The intent of BPMN is to standardize a business process modeling notation in the face of many different modeling notations and.oints. In doing so, BPMN will provide a simple means of communicating process information to other business users, process implementers, customers, and suppliers.
The membership of the BPMI Notation Working Group has brought forth expertise and experience with many existing notations and has sought to consolidate the best ideas from these divergent notations into a single standard notation. Examples of other notations or methodologies that were reviewed are UML Activity Diagram, UML EDOC Business Processes, IDEF, ebXML BPSS, Activity-Decision Flow (ADF) Diagram, RosettaNet, LOVeM, and Event-Process Chains (EPCs).
The BPMN specification defines the Business Process Diagram modeling objects, their semantics, their mapping to BPEL4WS, and is comprised of the following topics:
Introduction and BPMN Overview provides an introduction to BPMN, its requirements, and discusses the range of modeling purposes that BPMN can convey.
Business Process Diagrams provides a summary of the BPMN graphical elements and their relationships.
Business Process Diagram Graphical Objects details the graphical representation, attributes, and semantics of the behavior of BPMN Diagram elements.
Business Process Diagram Connecting Objects defines the graphical objects used to connect two objects together (i.e., the connecting lines of the Diagram) and how flow progresses through a Process (i.e., through a straight sequence or through the creation of parallel or alternative paths).
Mapping to BPEL4WS provides the formal mechanism for converting a Business Process to a BPEL4WS document.
BPMN by Example provides a walkthrough of a sample Process using BPMN and its particular mapping to BPEL4WS.
References provides a list of normative and non-normative references.
Open Issues provides a list of issues that will affect the future of the BPMN specification.
Appendix A: E-Mail Voting Process BPEL4WS provides a full sample of BPEL4WS code based on the example business process described in the "BPMN by Example" section.
Appendix B: BPMN Element Attributes and Types provides the complete set of BPMN Element attributes, which are first presented in Sections 3, 4, and 5, and the definition of types that support the attributes.
Appendix C: Glossary presents an alphabetical index of terms that are relevant to practitioners of BPMN.