The Cover PagesThe OASIS Cover Pages: The Online Resource for Markup Language Technologies
SEARCH | ABOUT | INDEX | NEWS | CORE STANDARDS | TECHNOLOGY REPORTS | EVENTS | LIBRARY
SEARCH
Advanced Search
ABOUT
Site Map
CP RSS Channel
Contact Us
Sponsoring CP
About Our Sponsors

NEWS
Cover Stories
Articles & Papers
Press Releases

CORE STANDARDS
XML
SGML
Schemas
XSL/XSLT/XPath
XLink
XML Query
CSS
SVG

TECHNOLOGY REPORTS
XML Applications
General Apps
Government Apps
Academic Apps

EVENTS
LIBRARY
Introductions
FAQs
Bibliography
Technology and Society
Semantics
Tech Topics
Software
Related Standards
Historic
Created: January 14, 2008.
News: Cover StoriesPrevious News ItemNext News Item

OASIS Members Propose Charter for WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) TC.

Contents

[Update February 01, 2008] No comments were received on the oasis-charter-discuss mailing list for the proposed TC. The OASIS WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Technical Committee was therefore created as described in the TC Charter Proposal.

[January 14, 2008] OASIS announced that consortium members have submitted a charter proposal for a new WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Technical Committee. Companies sponsoring the proposal include Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Software AG, and Sun Microsystems. The designated TC Convenor is Jeff Mischkinsky (Oracle).

This technical Committee proposal follows a June 2007 statement from a group of six technology vendors, including Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle, and SAP AG, announcing that the two-part BPEL4People specification would be submitted to OASIS in the near future.

The Web Services Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0 (WS-BPEL) specification was published as an approved OASIS Standard in April 2007. It provides a language for the specification of executable and abstract business processes, extending the Web Services interaction model to support business transactions. The FAQ document published by the OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language Technical Committee recognizes that "BPEL was not designed for human workflow."

The proposed BPEL4People Technical Committee would define: (1) extensions to the OASIS WS-BPEL 2.0 Standard to enable human interactions, and (2) a model of human interactions that are service-enabled. This work will be carried out through continued refinement of the Version 1.0 documents released in June 2007, consistent with the WS-BPEL Extension for People — BPEL4People Joint White Paper published by IBM and SAP in July 2005.

In particular, the new TC work will focus upon: (1) Defining the specification of a WS-BPEL extension enabling the definition of human interactions ("human tasks") as part of a WS-BPEL process; (2) Defining the specification of a model enabling the definition of human tasks that are exposed as Web services; (3) Defining a programming interface enabling human task client applications to work with human tasks.

Input to the new BPEL4People Technical Committee would include the two 2007-06 specifications: WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Version 1.0 and Web Services Human Task (WS-HumanTask) Version 1.0. These two documents take the ideas outlined in the IBM/SAP white paper and together provide a concrete realization of them. BPEL4People extends the capabilities of WS-BPEL to support a broad range of human interaction patterns, allowing for expanded modeling of business processes within the WS-BPEL language.

Bibliographic Information

Complete bibliographic references for the two current specifications (proposed for contribution to the new BPEL4People Technical Committee) are provided in the main reference document.

BPEL4People TC Charter Proposal: Excerpts

Portions of the BPEL4People TC Charter Proposal are provided below. See the complete text of the Charter Proposal for details [source].

1a. Name (and abbreviation) of the Technical Committee

OASIS WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Technical Committee

1b. Statement of Purpose

The purpose of the WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Technical Committee (TC) is to define:

  1. extensions to the OASIS WS-BPEL 2.0 Standard to enable human interactions
  2. a model of human interactions that are service-enabled

This work will be carried out through continued refinement of the BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask specifications (see the References section) to be submitted to the TC as referenced later in this charter.

1c. Scope of Work

The TC will accept as input Version 1.0 of the BPEL4People specification, and Version 1.0 of the WS-HumanTask specification as published by Adobe, Active Endpoints, BEA, IBM, Oracle and SAP AG (see the References section).

Other contributions and changes to the input documents will be accepted for consideration without any prejudice or restrictions and evaluated based on technical merit in so far as they conform to this charter. OASIS members with extensive experience and knowledge in related areas are particularly invited to participate.

This work will focus on:

  • Defining the specification of a WS-BPEL extension enabling the definition of human interactions ("human tasks") as part of a WS-BPEL process
  • Defining the specification of a model enabling the definition of human tasks that are exposed as Web services
  • Defining a programming interface enabling human task client applications to work with human tasks

WS-BPEL Extension (BPEL4People Specification)

The WS-BPEL Extension Specification will define the following:

  • Concept of people activity
  • Composition model for human tasks and processes supporting at least the following:
    • Inline human tasks in one people activity of a WS-BPEL process, without re-use
    • Inline human tasks in a WS-BPEL process for re-use in multiple people activities
    • Standalone human tasks for re-use in multiple WS-BPEL processes. The life-cycle of processes and human tasks is tightly coupled using the coordination protocol implemented in a vendor specific manner
    • Standalone human tasks for re-use in multiple WS-BPEL processes. The life-cycle of processes and human tasks is tightly coupled using the coordination protocol and protocol service standardized by WS-HumanTask.
    • Standalone human tasks, without using a particular coordination protocol, callable using plain Web services means, for re-use between WS-BPEL processes (invokes) and other Web services clients
  • Concept of inline human tasks within a people activity and within a WS-BPEL process. Inline human tasks within a WS-BPEL process can be reused by different people activities within that process
  • Allow people activity to reference a standalone human task (introduced in WS-HumanTask)
  • Concept of people activity context and mechanism to access the context from the people activity definition and from elsewhere in the enclosing scope
  • Semantics of people activity states and lifecycle:
    • States and basic operations for people activities aligned with the corresponding states and operations of standalone human tasks
  • Concept of generic human roles for processes
  • Definition of process specific people assignments
  • Mechanism to use logical people groups in WS-BPEL assignments
  • Support for time-based conditions on people activities, e.g., deferred activation of a human task
  • Support of specific interaction patterns:
    • Four-eyes principle (a.k.a. separation of duties)
  • Enablement of human tasks to access context information from the surrounding process including previous people activities and the corresponding human tasks.
  • Extension mechanism
  • Ad-hoc Attachments

Human Task Enablement (WS-HumanTask Specification)

The WS-Human Task Specification will define the following:

  • Concept of human tasks (i.e., tasks and notifications) as an explicit entity independent from any process definition
  • Concept of human task context and mechanism to access the context from the task definition
  • Concept of generic human roles for human tasks
  • Concept of logical people groups as an abstraction for assigned people used to hide access to organizational directories
  • Definition of people assignments
  • Data types representing individuals associated with human tasks
  • Semantics of task states and task lifecycle
  • Basic operations (API) for client application interactions with human tasks
  • Coordination protocol for processes (or other applications) interacting with human tasks
  • Handling of deadlines including escalation
  • Support of specific interaction patterns:
    • Nomination
    • Delegation
    • Escalation
  • Extension mechanism

Potential Additional Features

In addition to the specification features described above, the TC may explore the inclusion of the following features and topics, providing that the technical approach chosen does not contradict the scope described above:

  • Single user screen flow (chained execution)
  • Workflow patterns commonly encountered in document-centric and people-centric workflows including:
    • Sequential approval through a management chain
    • Parallel approval and voting
    • Approval management, group vote
    • Pushback
    • RequestInfo
  • Basic operations (API) for client application interactions with WS-BPEL processes (e.g., adding or deleting attachments)

Out of Scope

The following is a non-exhaustive list. It is provided only for the sake of clarity. If some function, mechanism or feature is not mentioned here, and is not mentioned in the Scope of Work section either, then it will be deemed to be out of scope.

The following items are specifically out of scope of the work of the TC:

  • Authorization definitions
  • Deployment
  • Monitoring
  • Organizational directories (e.g., Human Resources)
    • Definition of such directories
    • Specific mechanisms (including protocols) to query such directories
  • Task execution rendering and definition of user interface elements

1d. Deliverables

The TC has the following set of deliverables:

  • A revised BPEL4People specification and associated schema. A Committee Specification is targeted for completion within 18 months of the first TC meeting.
  • A revised WS-HumanTask specification with associated schema. A Committee Specification is targeted for completion within 18 months of the first TC meeting.

These specifications will reflect refinements, corrections or material technological improvements with respect to the input documents and in accordance with this charter.

Maintenance

Once the TC has completed work on a deliverable and it has become an OASIS Standard, the TC will enter "maintenance mode" for the deliverable.

The purpose of maintenance mode is to provide minor revisions to previously adopted deliverables to clarify ambiguities, inconsistencies and obvious errors. Maintenance mode is not intended to enhance a deliverable or to extend its functionality.

The TC will collect issues raised against the deliverables and periodically process those issues. Issues that request or require new or enhanced functionality shall be marked as enhancement requests and set aside. Issues that result in the clarification or correction of the deliverables shall be processed. The TC shall maintain a list of these adopted clarifications and shall periodically create a new minor revision of the deliverables including these updates. Periodically, but at least once a year, the TC shall produce and vote upon a new minor revision of the deliverables.

1e. IPR Mode

This TC will operate under the "RF (Royalty Free) on Limited Terms" IPR mode as defined in the OASIS Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy.

1f. Anticipated Audience

The anticipated audience for the documents produced by this TC includes:

  • Software vendors supporting WS-BPEL 2.0
  • Software vendors offering products to support human-centric processes
  • Software developers, architects and other roles involved with design, development, deployment and maintenance of WS-BPEL applications and human-centric processes

1g. TC Language

TC business will be conducted in English.

Informational

2a. Similar or Related Work

The BPEL4People specification and the WS-HumanTask specification may have dependencies on different technologies, such as:

  • BPEL4People: WS-HumanTask, WS-BPEL, WSDL, XPath, and XML Schema
  • WS-HumanTask: WSDL, XML Schema, XPath, WS-Addressing, WS-Coordination, WS-Policy

The TC will decide which version of these specifications will be used in their final work.

Liaisons will be established with other OASIS Technical Committees as determined appropriate by the members of the Technical Committee as work proceeds.

2b. Date, Time, and Location of First Meeting

Date: March 4, 2008
Time: 11:00 EDT
Duration: 2 hours
Mode: Teleconference
Telephone: Dial-in TBD
Sponsor: Oracle

2c. Projected Meeting Schedule

It is anticipated that the BPEL4People TC will regularly meet via teleconference (e.g., weekly or bi-weekly) at a time determined by the TC members during the TC's first meeting. It is anticipated that the BPEL4People TC will regularly meet face to face, every quarter if needed, at a time and location to be determined by the TC members.

2d. TC Supporters

The following eligible individuals are in support of this proposal:

2e. TC Convenor

The TC Convener is Jeff Mischkinsky, Oracle
jeff.mischkinsky@oracle.com

2f. Member Section Affiliation

The TC does not intend to affiliate with an OASIS Member Section.

2g. Anticipated Contributions

It is expected that Active Endpoints, Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle, and SAP AG will contribute the BPEL4People v1 and WS-HumanTask v1 specifications [1-6] and any other related documents such as errata, and that such documents will be the starting point contribution for initiating the work of this TC.

References

[1] http://www.active-endpoints.com/active-bpel-for-people.htm
[2] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/articles/bpel4people_overview.html
[3] http://dev2dev.bea.com/arch2arch/
[4] http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/specification/ws-bpel4people/
[5] http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/standards/bpel4people/
[6] https://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/bpel4people

Commentary

A substantial body of commentary on BPEL4People has been published since the release of the two-part specification in June 2007. A dedicated section in the main BPEL4People reference document provides some fifteen(+) citations with extracts.

Resources from the Specification Authors

The BPEL4People Version 1.0 documents are available from the company web sites of the six corporate authors, along with references to implementations and commentary. See these Resources from the Specification Authors.

Specification Extracts

Extracts from WS-BPEL Extension for People (BPEL4People) Version 1.0 and Web Services Human Task (WS-HumanTask) Version 1.0 are provided in main BPEL4People reference document.


Hosted By
OASIS - Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

Sponsored By

IBM Corporation
ISIS Papyrus
Microsoft Corporation
Oracle Corporation

Primeton

XML Daily Newslink
Receive daily news updates from Managing Editor, Robin Cover.

 Newsletter Subscription
 Newsletter Archives
Bottom Globe Image

Document URI: http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2008-01-14-a.html  —  Legal stuff
Robin Cover, Editor: robin@oasis-open.org