Research On Services Of Business Processes And Service-Management System

The Workflow technology can be traced back to the last century to the mid-eighties. At that time, the work-flow could only achieve simple transmission of business forms, created paperless office environment. In the next twenty years, workflow technology has been rapid development, included related products. More and newer technologies have been integrated into workflow. Today, workflow management system is becoming an integral part of the enterprise management system.Because of economic development, the size of modern enterprises gradually expanded. They are showing characteristics of distribution, heterogeneous and autonomous. Correspondingly, the enterprise information resources are also distribution and heterogeneous. The past centralized information dealing pattern can no longer meet the needs of enterprises. Under such circumstances, the workflow management system has entered a new stage of development——distributed workflow, which can across different platforms and have the characteristics of loosely coupled. With the emergence of Web Service technology, building workflow management system based on the idea of service-oriented has gradually become the trend. Web Service technology and service-oriented architecture provides a possible solution for complex cross-organizational business process management.This paper, based on the above-mentioned meaning, analyzed related technologies of workflow and Web Service, put forward a idea of developing business processes with combining the two technology, which could make business processes be able to be published, searched and called as Web services. Then it designed a process service management system, studied the system framework and main function modules. And developed the system through a practical project, to achieve the purpose of cross-platforms and loosely coupled. Main content and the conclusions are as follows: [1] Analyzed workflow and Web Service technology status in quo, as well as the meaning of building services of business process. The services of business processes make the workflow have the characteristics of loosely coupled and good encapsulation, increase flexibility of workflow management system with the ability to adapt to dynamic changes. It could shield differences between software platforms, to be quickly and easily for application integration, make a high degree of integration and interoperability, to achieve software reusing, reduce costs of system development.[2] Discussed related technologies of workflow and Web Service, analyzed the workflow reference model and XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and other key technologies and core protocol of Web Service.[3] Designed a process service management framework, based on analysis key technologies of both, which include modules as service process modeling, services of process, service release and service management.Service process modeling based on traditional methods, with addition of service message nodes. External services can be found and invoked dynamically at runtime, which could increase dynamic combination of business processes. Using messages to contact service requesters and service providers, for better support interoperability between the two, increased service reliability and quality.Services of process use WSDL to describe the function that the process provides, the location and how to invoke. It makes the process could be published to UDDI registration center, be found and be invoked as Web Services, which greatly expanded the scope of business and ease of use.Service management includes service status management, service binding and message management. The start of a service is a process of a workflow instantiation. After finding and starting a service, the system will bind the service requestor and the service process instance. Then use messages for implementation of service status inquiry, status control and data interaction.[4] Implement the framework with a service management system in a service-oriented integration platform. This service management system uses a business process platform based on JBoss jBPM workflow management system to model process services; to generate WSDL documents from simple process starting classes and register in UDDI center; to interact with message management system for monitoring the process services.The service management system designed in this paper has following characteristics:1. Do not need to change a lot of the original system architecture, use the existing business process platform as much as possible. It can reduce the cost and time of system reform.2. Based on standards technologies such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI and so on. There are many products in software market which support these technologies, and some open source projects. This can reduce the difficulty of development.3. External services used by process services can assembled dynamically. The service, using other services can be invoked by other requestors. In this way, it provides a solution for designing complex business collaboration between different departments or enterprises. For the use of dynamic combination between process services, it can be very easy to achieve business process combination on heterogeneous platforms.Services of processes add characteristics of loose coupled and good encapsulation to workflow. It can increase the flexibility of workflow management so that it will have the ability to adapt to dynamic changes; shield differences between software platforms so that application integration can be quickly and easily; make workflow management system be integrative and interoperable to achieve software reuse and reduce the cost of development. Using this technology, communication and resources sharing will be easier between enterprises insides or enterprises or enterprises and users. Enterprises can easily post their process services to Web for customers use, or share with partners so that they can finish cross-enterprise collaborative business processes and reduce the cost of construction of information. Researches of this area will greatly promote the enterprise information management system development, and have great significance in practical applications.The method of combining Web Service and workflow system is a very good solution to the problems that workflow system is facing. Business processes are packaged as Web services. This is helpful for controlling and invoking, makes business processes interaction more easily between different business activities. However, workflow technology and Web Service technologies are still developing. There are a lot of aspects, such as harmonization of standards, safety, cost control, have not been completely resolved. Study in this topic is very forward-looking. Although the study of combination of the two i still faced with a lot of problems and difficulties, the advantage has been reflected clearly. Major manufacturers and research institutions are also attached great importance to it. It will be hot topic for a period of time in the future. Applications of the technology will be more mature.