Essential Business Process Modeling

Chapter Seven. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)

ALTHOUGH ITS INFLUENCE HAS WANED IN RECENT YEARS, the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC, http://www.wfmc.org) remains a rich source of ideas about BPM. The contributions of this group include a decade-old workflow reference model and specifications for the design of its main pieces, including a client API and an exportable process definition format.

The WfMC, founded in 1993, is a nonprofit organization that writes workflow standards, including a workflow reference model and specifications for each of its core interfaces: XPDL, WAPI, and WfXML. The WfMC also produces voluminous BPM literature; notably, the annual Workflow Handbook (http://www.wfmc.org/information/info.html). The group is chaired by Jon Pyke and has more than 300 member organizations, including BEA, FileNet, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, NEC Soft, Oracle, Sun, TIBCO (Staffware), Toshiba, Vignette, Vitria, and WebMethods.

This chapter highlights the core WfMC design ideas. The first section examines the WfMC reference model. Next, it explores XPDL, providing an extended example, a brief look at the main elements, and a summary of its support for the P4 patterns. The next section examines the major functional elements of the WAPI and provides an example. The chapter concludes with a brief look at the WfXML.

WFMC STILL MATTERS

In the fast-changing world of BPM, WfMC is an older, more established group with mature ideas. With the increasing popularity of the competing BPEL ...