ARIS, webMethods and CentraSite

In this talk, Mr. Eric Brabaender of IDS Scheer presents how model to execution will work in the future. We already got an overview by Dr. Jost but also in the joint presentation of Susan Ganeshan and Georg Simon yesterday, but Mr. Brabaender will really go through the details. Eric was so kind to do a short photo shooting at the beginning of the presentation, see results below :-)

Eric notes that this integration is not yet ready and that he will also show some mock-ups or faked screenshots. On a first glance, there are 3 views on a business process to be executed:

• business view, done by process owner, business analyst and process engineer
• logical view, done by process participant, integration engineer and proc engineer
• execution view, done by UI developer, integration engineer and SW engineer

The overall solution consists of an architecture and governance. The architecture is based on the assumption that everything should be stored and managed in a single repository. That is a task of the development departments to integrate the different tools so that a user won't notice any breaks between the tools. In processes, services are used. The technical web services will be managed in CentraSite and linked in ARIS to business processes.

Now, Mr. Brabaender goes through the whole process. He starts with defining the overall strategy in ARIS. Afterwards, he shows how current processes can be analysed in ARIS to identify problems preventing achieving strategic goals. Based on this assessment, the to-be process gets designed. He shows how business rules can be added to the process to a) simplify the process design and b) to formalise already certain decisions so that they can get automated later.

The process is also annotated with business services. In case no business service can be found, a request for a new service is modelled in ARIS. Such a service request is forwarded from ARIS to CentraSite so that the IT department can take care of implementing it on time.

Now, the business process is complete and ARIS Process Governance is used to initiate the transformation into the logical view. In the logical view, BPMN 2 is used as notation. The transformation from EPC to BPMN is automated, but can also be done manually. Links to technical services are preserved and the link to CentraSite is still present. For manual steps, webMethods can be used to describe the user interface. Also, if services are still missing, they can be selected directly from CentraSite in ARIS.

If a logical process is ready for implementation, the model can be opened in webMethods Designer. Currently, XPDL files must be transferred manually, but in the future webMethods Designer can directly retrieve the model from ARIS. In webMethods Designer, the model will look similar to ARIS. It is possible to change the process in webMethods Designer. If such a change happens, ARIS notices it and informs the one responsible for the logical process model. If the change is accepted, the logical model in ARIS is updated accordingly. So it is possible to not go only from ARIS to webMethods, but also the other way around.

Also in webMethods Designer, the web service registry provided by CentraSite can be accessed. It is possible to replace services selected in ARIS and this information is again updated in ARIS, too. If such changes do not just influence the logical process, but also the business process, it is possible to feed such changes upward.

Mr. Brabaender doesn't provide any details of the actual process execution. In the remaining minutes of his talk, he focuses on the final step of the process life cycle: Monitoring and optimising processes. The execution can be measured and if problems are identified, new change requests can be issued through the governance component.

Some details on the roadmap: First phase is already done. An EPC is handed over to webMethods by manual transfer of a XPDL file. The second phase still due this year, synchronisation in both directions will work, but it will still be based on file exchange. Phase three is planned for next year, where the whole integration should be available.

A first question from the audience was about the ARIS products needed for this integration? At the moment ARIS SOA Architect is needed, but Mr. Brabaender said it will be in ARIS Business Architect later on. Another question was if capabilities in ARIS will be available in CentraSite as well? According to Mr. Brabaender, this is still under discussion, because capability concept in ARIS and CentraSite don't match exactly. A question asked if this will be possible with the 7 release of webMethods, but here Mr. Brabaender said that as webMethods must be extended to support it, a new version not yet released will be required.

Mr. Brabaender used the demo company United Motors Group (UMG) to illustrate all the steps described before. This makes it a little bit challenging for me to abstract from what he showed and write it here. I still hope the above description makes sense and gives you an idea how the integration of ARIS, webMethods and CentraSite will look like.