O R AC L E BPM SUITE 11G

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1 Bruce Silver Associates Industry Trend Reports Independent Expertise in BPM February 2013 Business-Driven BPM BPMS Watch Bruce Silver 1216 New York Drive, Altadena CA USA Tel: O R AC L E BPM SUITE 11G For years, the challenge for BPM Suite vendors has been how to match BPM s businessdriven promise to the technical complexity of automating core business processes. At one time, business-driven meant process analysts working with the business to create process and use case models as business requirements that would handed off to developers for implementation. For today s BPM market, business-driven demands more. It means empowerment of process analysts and business users themselves to directly participate in the implementation. That requires a new generation of tools, not just for process authoring but for management at runtime, tools designed for business users. Of course, programmers and traditional IDEs continue to play a vital role in BPM. But implementation would be faster, less costly, and a better match to user expectations if process analysts and end users could do some of that implementation themselves, including design of process flows, task forms, data models, and decision logic, or optimize process performance through simulation analysis. The latest release of Oracle BPM Suite 11g version embraces this challenge. A centerpiece of the new version is enhancement of the Business Process Composer, a browser-based tool for process analysts and business users that bridges the divide between modeling and executable design. Process Composer in the new release adds features for team collaboration and versioning, form design, simulation analysis and process playback, definition of business objects, and decision modeling. Another key element is case management, in which tasks are determined dynamically based on case context, using events, rules and process logic defined in Composer in combination with ad-hoc user actions at runtime. A case is now a first-class component in Oracle BPM 11g, with its own model of case activities, events, stakeholders, and permissions separate from those embedded in a BPM process, as well as its own Process Space for the case folder.. This report examines Oracle BPM Suite 11g , explains its position and differentiation in the BPMS landscape, and takes a closer look at the new capabilities of the latest version. We ll focus on its new features that empower business users, both at design time and runtime, and just touch on the developer-oriented tooling and runtime stack that have made Oracle BPM s world-class reputation in the past. Product Overview Oracle BPM Suite 11g, part of Oracle Fusion Middleware, combines business-driven design and rich human-centric BPM with Oracle s well-known strengths in robust integration middleware. When BPM 11g was first launched in 2010, it was the first BPM Suite to take advantage of BPMN 2.0 as an executable process design standard, while rivals like IBM and SAP still had a split personality BPMN for human-centric processes and BPEL for integration-centric. That gap has diminished somewhat today, but Oracle s unified and complete message still remains a differentiator in another aspect, as a single platform supporting both conventional BPM and case management. Oracle maintains that you

2 shouldn t have to buy two different platforms to do structured and unstructured processes and I basically agree. The new release retains the original BPM 11g architecture (Figure 1), which combines two formerly distinct BPM offerings one based on BPMN (deriving from Fuego via BEA) and the other on BPEL (deriving from Collaxa) in a powerful unified design and runtime platform. Today, BPEL is mostly confined to the Oracle SOA Suite, the Fusion Middleware component providing the underlying integration middleware, while the end-to-end BPM is BPMN-based. BPM 11g provides two alternative authoring environments: BPM Studio, a desktop IDE based on JDeveloper and oriented to Java programmers, and Process Composer, a browserbased environment oriented to process analysts and business users. Process Composer has been enhanced to handle several aspects of implementation design formerly requiring Studio, including definition of business objects, decision models, and task forms. Figure 1. Oracle BPM 11g architecture. Source: Oracle The Oracle BPM runtime is based on WebLogic Server, with system monitoring and management through Oracle Enterprise Manager. In addition to the process engine, the runtime includes the Oracle Rules Engine and a separate Human Workflow Engine. Maintaining decision logic separate from process logic increases business agility by letting business analysts modify the logic without requiring developer assistance or interrupting business processes. The human workflow service provides task routing to users or roles, deadlines and escalations, task forms, and similar workflow features. End user experience is handled through a combination of the Oracle BPM Workspace and BPM Process Spaces. The BPM Workspace lets users view running process instances, work on tasks, and monitor performance dashboards. Process Spaces is a collaborative workspace built on top of Oracle WebCenter Spaces and adds team collaboration features for BPM users. Bruce Silver Associates

3 WYDIWYE: What You Draw is What You Execute When it was first launched in 2010, Oracle BPM Suite 11g was the first BPMS based on executable BPMN 2.0, a choice that other middleware-oriented BPMS vendors have since begun to imitate. The advantage of this is true model-driven process execution, sometimes called WYDIWYE What You Draw Is What You Execute. WYDIWYE stands in contrast to BPMN that just serves as a blueprint or business requirements for implementation in some other process language, such as BPEL or Java. Today, the war is over. For BPM at least, WYDIWYE, Oracle s approach, has won. But that doesn t necessarily mean that the BPMN created by the process analyst is the BPMN used in the executable implementation. Model sharing between analyst and developer normally requires the analyst and developer to share a common IDE, usually with the analyst using a simplified analyst mode. In fact, when BPM 11g first came out, that is how it worked, and that approach still works up to a point. But to be really businessdriven, BPM implementation should not require process analysts and business users to use a programmer IDE, and that is the big advantage of Oracle BPM Suite 11g. It lets business users go from modeling to execution using Process Composer. Process Composer is browser-based, not a heavyweight desktop IDE, with a more businessfriendly interface. Unlike the browser-based business-oriented process modeling environments from, say, IBM or SAP, Process Composer shares the same repository of design artifacts used by developers in BPM Studio. In other words, Composer artifacts are not simply business requirements but part of the actual implementation. The familiar mismatch between business requirements and executable implementation the notorious roundtripping problem is greatly reduced. In terms of BPMN 2.0 support, Oracle was not only first out of the gate but remains ahead of its major BPMS competitors today. For example, most BPM Suites completely omit message flows in their BPMN models, the dashed lines representing interactions between the process and external entities and processes. Oracle does not. For example (Figure 2), Oracle uses message flows to show in the diagram where one process can trigger another one or invoke a service, with drilldown to the message details. Oracle BPM also excels in its support for the most important BPMN events: Message (pointto-point inter-process communications), Error (propagation of exceptions from child to parent process levels), Timer (deadline-triggered behavior), and Signal (general purpose publish-subscribe integration). When drawn on the boundary of an activity, these events signify that if the event trigger occurs while the activity is running, the process will initiate the exception flow drawn out of the boundary event. If the activity completes without the event trigger, then the exception flow is ignored. Such boundary events can be used, for example, to describe what happens when the customer changes an order in flight, or when an activity takes too long, or when a service returns an exception (Figure 3). While competitors ignore certain event-triggered behaviors or hide them behind custom Javascript, Oracle BPM 11g follows the WYDIWYE paradigm for both exception handling and inter-process communications and makes the behavior visible in the process diagram. Bruce Silver Associates

4 Figure 2. Oracle supports BPMN collaboration diagrams depicting message flows between pools. Source: Oracle Figure 3. Oracle supports all the important BPMN event types for exception handling. Source: Oracle Another aspect of Oracle s BPMN implementation that is a bit different from the norm is the modeling of human tasks and workflow. Notice in Figure 1 that the Human Workflow Engine separate from the BPMN process engine. Following an idea that originated in the BPEL4People standard, a single human task in Oracle s BPMN process model may be implemented as a complex human workflow, such as an approval chain involving multiple actors. The advantages of this are more flexible assignment of the actors, based on declarative rules, and a common workflow paradigm shared with Oracle applications. Bruce Silver Associates

5 Process Composer The browser-based Process Composer is the centerpiece of Oracle s business-driven implementation effort in In Composer, process analysts and business users can create BPM projects based on project templates. Each project template exposes a business catalog of process components shared with developers using Oracle BPM Studio via the Oracle Metadata Store (MDS). Composer lets business users assemble these components, whether created by themselves or by developers in Studio, in executable process solutions. In other words, they can go from model to execution and deployment directly from Composer. Business users can also create projects not based on a template. Collaborative Project Workspace Each project in Composer has its own project workspace (Figure 4), with team collaboration features including management of project roles, shared editing of processes, human tasks, business rules, and other project components, snapshot versioning and change history of all project objects, and project approval workflows. Figure 4. Project workspace in Process Composer. Source: Oracle Process Modeling Process Composer includes a full BPMN 2.0 editor (Figure 5), and allows business users to review and comment on process models created by others (Figure 6). Bruce Silver Associates

6 Figure 5. Browser-based BPMN 2.0 editor in Composer. Source: Oracle Figure 6. Specifying business requirements for process implementation through Composer. Source: Oracle Simulation New in is the ability to perform simulation analysis inside Composer. (In previous versions, this required BPM Studio.) Simulation lets you project changes in operational performance metrics such as process cost and cycle time by assigning estimated resource costs and activity durations to the process model (Figure 7). Bruce Silver Associates

7 Figure 7. Simulation parameter definition in Process Composer. Source: Oracle Based on those parameters, for a given scenario of staffing levels and process instance volumes, simulation projects end-to-end performance and identifies bottlenecks that could occur (Figure 8). Simulation in interactive, and can combine estimated parameters with real runtime data. Figure 8. Simulation analysis inside Composer. Source: Oracle Activity Guides Oracle BPM supports guided business processes that help task performers complete and manage their work more easily and with less training. Activity Guides defined in Process Bruce Silver Associates

8 Composer (Figure 9) define milestones, each a set of tasks that the process participant must complete. Figure 9. Activity Guide definition in Composer. Source: Oracle Figure 10 shows how an Activity Guide is presented to participants for an employee onboarding process, a more business-friendly presentation for many human-centric processes. Developers can customize the presentation using ADF. Figure 10. Activity guide for employee onboarding process. Source: Oracle Task Forms One of the most significant enhancements in the new release is the ability to design task forms in Composer (Figure 11). Previously, this required definition of ADF forms in BPM Studio, in some cases a barrier to business-driven implementation. Now process analysts can design and preview web forms themselves in Composer. Developers can further enrich the behavior of Composer web forms through scripting. Bruce Silver Associates

9 Figure 11. Composer Form Editor. Source: Oracle Process Player Another significant addition to Composer in is the Process Player (Figure 12). It allows the process analyst to step through the process one activity at a time, play the role of the assigned task performer, display the task form, and interact with it via fields and buttons. Playback of process models to stakeholders in the business allows immediate feedback, leading to shorter implementation cycles, shorter training times, and increased user acceptance. Processes do not need to have implementation details defined in order to use the Player. Playback of these draft mode models lets business users visualize the flow of work prior to implementation and facilitates iterative process discovery. Figure 12. Process Player in Composer. Source: Oracle Business Rules Business rules let organizations encapsulate business decision logic in reusable components defined outside of the processes that use them. Most BPMSs force process designers to choose between very simple rules defined within the BPMS design environment and third- Bruce Silver Associates

10 party Business Rule Management Suites that must be integrated with the BPMS. Oracle stands out by bundling and integrating a full-featured BRMS, Oracle Business Rules, within the BPMS tooling, accessible from Composer or BPM Studio. A dictionary is an Oracle Business Rules container for all the components of decision logic, an XML file that stores the rulesets and the data model. Dictionaries are created in Oracle JDeveloper and can be viewed and edited in Process Composer. The Composer Business Rules Editor (Figure 13) supports both IF/THEN rules and Decision Tables. Each condition row in a Decision Table tests the allowed values of a data input to the ruleset, called a fact. Each column represents a particular bucketset, an enumerated fact value or range. The combination of all the condition tests in a column specifies an action, typically setting the value of a data output. The complete Decision Table defines a ruleset, deployed as a business rule component invoked from the process as a Business Rule task in BPMN. The editor provides quick tools for resolving gaps and conflicts in the table. Figure 13. Business Rules Editor in Process Composer. Source: Oracle Business rules can be used to simplify complex routing logic at gateways, detailed task assignment and workflow, and dynamic service selection. The combination of a powerful business-friendly rule designer with direct integration to BPMN process models is another reason Oracle BPM 11g stands out from the BPMS pack. Enhanced End User Experience Oracle has made significant efforts in to increase the flexibility of the BPM end user experience, both in the process portal or workspace, and in handling assigned workflow tasks. Workspace Enhancements Out of the box, Oracle BPM provides the Business Process Workspace, a customizable form of a typical BPM end user worklist (Figure 14). In addition, Oracle BPM Suite 11g offers an enhanced Web 2.0-based social collaboration environment called Process Spaces. Bruce Silver Associates

11 Figure 14. Business Process Workspace. Source: Oracle Process Spaces is part of Oracle WebCenter Spaces, a role-based runtime environment built on Oracle WebCenter Framework and Application Development Framework (ADF). Each Process Space is a user-configurable container for a variety of widgets combining team collaboration with process information, including calendars, discussions, documents, tasks, an activity stream, wikis, process audit trail, and more (Figure 15, Figure 16). They are the cornerstone of what Oracle calls Social BPM, fit-for-purpose collaboration environments leveraging Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 technology that place process tasks and dashboards in a social context. Figure 15. Process Spaces built on Oracle WebCenter are user-configurable Web 2.0 mashups of BPM, team collaboration, and other components. Source: Oracle Bruce Silver Associates

12 Figure 16. Process Spaces. Source: Oracle Views (Figure 17), introduced in , represent end user-configurable worklists instead of the standard Inbox view. Users define their own sort, filter, and display criteria in both personal and shared views. Worklist widgets can be bound to any selected view. Figure 17. User View configuration. Source: Oracle Rich Human Interaction BPM Studio supports definition of richly interactive human task user interfaces using the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) and configured using wizards as Java Server Page XML (.jspx) files. ADF is a declarative framework based on industry standard Bruce Silver Associates

13 Java Server Faces (JSF). It includes a rich set of interactive components, a zero-code WYSIWYG designer, and wizards for generation of task user interfaces linked to BPM. Figure 18. ADF Task Flow. Source: Oracle ADF implements the Model View Controller pattern, separating the data from its presentation to users. The Model defines the link between the underlying business services that provide access to both BPM and external data sources and the View, that is, the forms. ADF task flows (Figure 18) define the screenflow logic implemented by the Controller how a BPM end user clicking a button on a page in a Human Task UI interacts with some data, which is then presented on some other page. Figure 19. ADF task UI supports rich human interaction. Source: Oracle In this way, ADF can abstract any back-end data source as a data control and mash it up with BPM data to create a richly interactive end user experience for BPM users. Custom task forms support tabbed interfaces including process data, charts and graphs, and action buttons linked to the process model (Figure 19). ADF also includes data visualization components supporting a wide variety of charts and graphs, Gantt charts, map viewers, and hierarchy viewers that can be used to enhance the BPM UI. Bruce Silver Associates

14 Oracle BPM Suite 11g also supports rendering of web forms, ADF Forms and BPM Workspace in mobile browsers (Figure 20). Figure 20. BPM Workspace in ipad. Source: Oracle Figure 21. Rule-based delegation, reassignment, or automated handling. Source: Oracle Flexible Process Management The new release of Oracle BPM Suite 11g provides enhanced process management flexibility for process participants, owners, and administrators. Through Preferences configured in a participant s workspace, User Rules can automatically reassign, delegate, or approve/reject work items meeting specific criteria, such as arriving while the user is on vacation (Figure 21). The rule conditions can select instances based on due dates, specific Bruce Silver Associates

15 tasks, or certain values of process data. Rules can also be used to specify notification channels based on conditions (Figure 22). By tailoring participation to each user s needs, rules such as these can greatly improve the effectiveness of process automation. Figure 22. Rule-based notifications. Source: Oracle Figure 23. Owner view. Source: Oracle Supervisors and process owners often need to search for specific instances of a running process for special handling. Owner views (Figure 23) allow search based on multiple Bruce Silver Associates

16 conditions and ad-hoc actions on the retrieved instance, such as altering its data or flow, all supported by an audit trail. Figure 24. Ad-hoc insertion of a new task in human workflow. Source: Oracle Ad-hoc processing is also possible in the steps managed by the Human Workflow Service (Figure 24). An assigned task performer can reassign or delegate a task instance at runtime, and new approvers may be inserted into the chain at runtime. Figure 25. Instance patching and revisioning. Source: Oracle In addition, Oracle BPM now supports instance patching and instance revisioning (Figure 25). Instance patching migrates all running instances of a process to a new version, on the fly. Instance revisioning deploys a new process version and migrates selected in-flight Bruce Silver Associates

17 instances. An Oracle tool reports which instances can be migrated safely without manual intervention. Case Management The term case management, sometimes called dynamic case management or adaptive case management, refers to business processes that are unstructured in the sense of lacking predefined activity flow models such as BPMN provides. Case activities are instead defined independently and related to each other by rules, events, and ad-hoc user actions. Unlike some of its competitors, Oracle offers case management as part of the BPM11g product, not as a separate product. After all, many of the concepts and components used in regular BPM event-triggered behaviors, business rules, activities, and milestones, for example apply in case management as well. The difference is that in case management, the tasks available to be performed are determined dynamically based on the case context. Other aspects of case management, such as strong integration with content management, BAM and case analytics, are already supported by BPM. A major difference between case management and regular BPM is that case activities, events, stakeholders, and permissions are related to each other by a different type of logic. A case progresses through various milestones by a combination of activities, events, and rules. Figure 26 illustrates editors for specifying the properties for a case (milestones, outcomes, permissions, etc.) and for a case activity (availability, inputs, outputs). Figure 26. Editors for defining Case and Case Activity properties. Source: Oracle Instead of interacting with a the small bit of process information exposed by a particular task form in regular BPM, case management users typically access all information related to the Bruce Silver Associates

18 case via an electronic case folder. Oracle implements the case folder as a Case Space, for which the Process Spaces interface works well (Figure 27). Alternatively, case activities can be presented to users through an Activity Guide, such as used in regular BPM (Figure 10). Since all users can access the same shared case folder or Space, case management requires a finer-grained permissions model than regular BPM. For that, Oracle links Security tags to sets of security policies, granting user permissions to case objects associated with those tags. Figure 27. Case Space in Oracle Process Spaces. Source: Oracle Case information often takes the form of documents rather than fields in a form, and those documents must be indexed and managed even after the case is closed. That requires tight integration between case management and a content management repository. Oracle BPM provides that, integrating not only with Oracle Content Server but with any third-party content repository supporting the CMIS standard. Process Analytics Oracle BPM captures performance data for purposes ranging from basic operational monitoring to strategic process intelligence (Figure 28). It aggregates process events into performance measures, which can be sliced and diced by various dimensions. In addition to the predefined measures, process analysts can define custom measures using business indicators, a special type of process variable supporting dimensional analysis. Oracle BPM provides a set of pre-defined cubes, database structures that let you break out aggregated measures in real time by various dimensions. Oracle BPM calls this Process Analytics and supports it in various ways. Bruce Silver Associates

19 Figure 28. Spectrum of Process Analytics. Source: Oracle For operational monitoring, the standard BPM Workspace Dashboards provide out-of-thebox charts of workload and performance by process and participant, with drilldown from process to its activities, and from participant to processes (Figure 29). You can drill down to individual instances as well. The instance drilldown shows an audit trail (both tabular and graphical) of the execution path. Figure 29. Operational Monitoring dashboard in BPM Workspace. Source: Oracle In addition, Oracle BAM (Figure 30) provides real-time monitoring in tailored reports that support management by exception and alert-triggered actions. It continuously tracks key performance indicators and service level agreements, correlating process events and conditions, and identifying trends as they emerge. Event-triggered alerts and automated actions allow users to react quickly in response to exception conditions. Bruce Silver Associates

20 Figure 30. Oracle BAM. Source: Oracle For true process intelligence, Oracle BPM integrates with Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE). The process model in combination with the BPM STAR schema can be mapped to the BI model to create process-aware BI dashboards (Figure 31). Figure 31. Process-aware BI. Source: Oracle Oracle Real-Time Decision (RTD) software adds predictive analytics and business intelligence to business logic. An automated self-learning system, Oracle RTD attempts to make the best possible decision at the current moment based on data and situational context, and uses data to discover insights that continually improve decisions over time. It combines software and expertise to automate and improve decision-making within critical business systems, continuously updating itself based on new data and optimizing its recommendations. For example, in product promotional offers, it provides situational awareness that correlates attributes such as customer demographics, location, income, and purchase history, and can learn from previous outcomes, such as the most favorable time of day. Finally, Oracle Event Processing (OEP) provides complex event processing, correlating business events and generating triggered actions based on defined patterns and rules. These events can be generated by both processes and external sources. Bruce Silver Associates

21 In sum, Oracle s broad spectrum of process analytics offerings translates into smart BPM that not only automates and monitors the process but optimizes performance as it runs. Process Accelerators To reduce time-to-value for its customers, Oracle offers a variety of Process Accelerators (Figure 32). Designed in collaboration with customers, these prebuilt, extensible productgrade solutions embody domain knowledge and best practices. Each Process Accelerator provides a collection of process and data models, automated services, richly interactive human tasks, business rules, content management, and process analytics, together with documentation and learning content. Figure 32. Process Accelerators currently available (checked), with more on the way. Source: Oracle Unified Foundation for BPM and SOA With all the emphasis on business empowerment, we should not forget that Oracle BPM provides a unified and complete platform for all types of processes: human-centric, integration-centric, structured or unstructured, all layered on a world-class SOA foundation. Unified Process Authoring Although used primarily by developers, Oracle BPM Studio shares its catalog of process components with Composer through the Oracle Metadata Store (MDS). Thus, there is a single set of modeling artifacts shared by process analysts, business users, and developers, from conception to execution, avoiding the Business-IT roundtripping problem faced by most BPM Suites. BPM Studio (Figure 33) provides a comprehensive, unified authoring environment for BPM developers. In addition to a BPMN 2.0 process editor, BPM Studio provides editors for process data, organizational roles, services and application integration, human tasks (including ADF forms and task flows), business rules, process analytics, and all other components of a complete BPM solution. All of the Studio components used in a BPM project are collected in the business catalog, which is shared with Process Composer in the form of project templates. Process analysts can use BPM Studio as well, although many of Bruce Silver Associates

22 the tasks formerly done in Studio s process analyst perspective are now available in Process Composer. Studio Comprehensive IDE for Developers Empower business analyst with catalog of implementation artifacts Single BPMN 2.0 model Figure 33. BPM Studio. Source: Oracle Integrated SOA Foundation Most BPM Suites supporting business-driven implementation lack a robust SOA foundation well integrated with the BPM stack. Not so with Oracle BPM 11g. Its unified runtime architecture (Figure 34) layers BPM on top of the world-class Oracle Fusion Middleware foundation supporting SOA, process orchestration, human task management, and business rules. Figure 34. Unified runtime architecture. Source: Oracle Oracle s scalable grid infrastructure supports extremely high transaction rates and thousands of concurrent users for both system and human workflows. The integration layer offers a Bruce Silver Associates

23 common JCA-based connectivity infrastructure, Oracle adapters, Oracle Service Bus, mediation flows, and policy-based security and quality of service. You also get UDDI, identity services, B2B services, event infrastructure, and other Fusion Middleware features missing in a pureplay human-centric BPMS. BPMN-SOA Links Unlike other BPMSs, Oracle makes the linkage between BPMN shapes and their SOA component implementations explicit and configurable in the process model. User tasks in BPMN call human task components; BPMN Business Rule tasks call business rule components; BPMN Service tasks call synchronous service composites, including BPEL processes; BPMN Send/Receive tasks and Message events invoke asynchronous composites, including other BPMN processes, and their callbacks. BPMN Signal events leverage the power of the Fusion Event Delivery Network for loosely coupled publish-subscribe integration based on business events. BPMN Error events reference exceptions defined in the BPM Studio business catalog. In the integration layer, BPEL continues to play an important role in defining automated composite services that are called by BPMN business processes. Service Component Architecture Both BPM and SOA composites are described using the Service Component Architecture (SCA) standard. Connections between the service components representing each process, service, human task, business rule, and adapter used in a BPM project are modeled as wires in the SCA Composite Editor (Figure 35). Security and quality of service properties can be specified for the wires using policies defined either in JDeveloper or at runtime in Enterprise Manager. Figure 35. Composite editor shows connections between all solution components. Source: Oracle The Metadata Store (MDS) repository stores deployed applications and components as well as projects and project templates for both BPM and SOA. MDS is a key enabler of collaborative process design and business-empowered implementation using Process Composer. The implementation of each BPMN activity and event is defined by a service component. Unified Administration BPM and SOA are integrated in runtime monitoring and administration as well, through Oracle Enterprise Manager, the administrator console for Fusion Middleware. All deployed Bruce Silver Associates

24 BPM and SOA composite applications are tracked by Enterprise Manager, which continuously monitors the state of running instances with flow tracing and fault recovery. That means you don t need to go to different tools to track down problems and take corrective action, since Enterprise Manager provides a uniform view from high level processes down to low level service components. For debugging and fault recovery, administrators can drill down to the process audit trail. The flow trace in Enterprise Manager is a list of inter-component messages in a BPMN process instance, operation across instances of the various components involved in the process, linked by execution context ID. The Bottom Line Oracle continues to raise the bar with BPM11g Known for its strengths in application integration and SOA, Oracle has now made a large portion of human-centric BPM implementation accessible directly to business users and process analysts through Process Composer. Areas that formerly required BPM Studio form design, simulation analysis, aspects of data and decision modeling now can be performed in web-based Process Composer. In fact, for many processes you can go from concept to executable design and deployment all within Composer. The new Process Player allows playback to stakeholders, even for incomplete process models, directly from Composer, resulting in immediate feedback supporting continuous iterative improvement. What sets Oracle s business-driven BPM approach apart from that of its major competitors is use of a common model repository, the Oracle Metadata Store (MDS), to share Composer artifacts with developer artifacts from BPM Studio. Sharing of the business catalog avoids the roundtripping problem that often plagues BPM projects, and allows business users to collaborate directly with developers throughout the implementation cycle. The result is faster implementation and better user acceptance. A second key differentiator is embrace of the case management processes within the core BPM platform, as opposed to requiring separate products for BPM and case management. Yes, case management is different from structured BPM. It needs different tools, a different user interface, and different underlying rules. But it also has many elements in common with regular BPM. Faced with the choice between buying separate products for case management and BPM or a single product providing both, there is no doubt which is preferable. The fact that it is hard to do seems the main reason why other vendors don t offer this. Even within regular BPM, Oracle has increased the flexibility of process management at runtime, including ad-hoc insertion of human workflow steps, instance patching and versioning, and enhanced search and instance rerouting with Process Owner views. And they continue to work toward shortening BPM time-to-value by expanding the portfolio of Process Accelerators. And with all of this, it s important to remember that Oracle is not a human-centric BPM pureplay, but a major middleware provider that layers BPM on a world-class SOA foundation. When BPM is managing critical business processes in the enterprise, nothing less than that will do. It s not that it s impossible to combine BPM with a third-party integration layer, but having a common middleware platform for both BPM and SOA makes both development and runtime management much easier. For all of these reasons, if you re looking at BPM, you need to take a look at Oracle BPM. Bruce Silver February 2013 Bruce Silver Associates