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Justin C. Brunt of the Workflow Management Coalition's (WfMC) Steering Committee explains the road to XML Process Definition Language (XPDL) 2.0 in an important case study. |
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| This case study is an inspiring story that charts a journey of a proprietary process definition language to an open standard. It is also, by necessity, a very personal perspective because of Justin's involvement in XPDL was due to the fact that he worked for the respective organizations that supported the emerging standard from its earliest days. |
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Now as WfMC's vice-chair of the Steering Committee, Justin speaks from his own experience in working on XPDL, using a case study whose narrative echoes the course taken by most WfMC members and vendors in this industry. It's a fascinating story often researched by academics tracking the origins of an industry standard and is, in essence, WfMC's own XPDL story. While many chapters in the annual WfMC Handbook are about user implementation case studies of its standards, there is seldom an opportunity to take a peek at how they started and evolved.
This case study documents a journey to XPDL 2.0 and relates some of the challenges along the way and some of the eventual advantages associated with the move to XPDL 2.0. As with other established workflow and BPM products the origins of Justin's work pre-date workflow or BPM standards, for that matter it can be traced back to the second half of the 1980s, well before the WfMC was founded in 1993.
Even in those early days it was evident to him that the ability to exchange process definitions was an important factor. Therefore, in the absence of an open standard, a proprietary solution was created. In more than 20 intervening years since the beginning work on workflow products were created, workflow, BPM, and related standards have progressed considerably.
The WfMC's XPDL has gained popularity with approximately 70 known implementations (see a list of known XPDL implementers at http://www.wfmc.org/standards/xpdl.htm). The WfMC has completed version 2.1 of XPDL and the WfMC Steering Committee voted on 23 April 2008 to approve it. Although originally intended as an execution language, some product authors have chosen WS-BPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language) as a basis for exchanging business process definitions.
To read the complete overview of how process definition persistence and interoperability has progressed hand-in-hand with the evolution of the WfMC's XPDL right up to the present day, go to http://www.tibco.com/resources/solutions/bpm/brunt-road-to-xpdl.pdf.
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