WSBPEL UsageScenario Guidelines [v04]

August 11, 2003

Purpose and Goal

The purpose of theseguidelines is to define:

  1. A taxonomy of usage scenarios, and their constituent parts
  2. A method of collecting and tracking the usage scenarios
  3. A guidance for a minimum set of usage scenarios to initially consider

The goal is to create an initial set of usage scenarios described in such a manner that they can be used for both abstract and executable processes. This will make the work of WS BPEL understandable to other standards groups, as well as providing a basis to assure operational consistency between abstract and executable processes. Additionally, having a set of high-level usage scenarios provides a natural sanity check for the issues and requirements committee.

Technical use cases can then be illustrated within the usage scenarios in a consistent manner.

Taxonomy

The taxonomy of usage scenarios is:

  1. Business scenario
  2. Legal entities
  3. Enterprise
  4. Business Unit
  5. Partner
  6. Customer
  7. Franchise
  8. Schematic business flow
  9. Abstract
  10. Executable
  11. Actors within legal entities
  12. Web services
  13. People
  14. Business process in detail
  15. Inventory of assumed XML schemas
  16. These can be referenced from an appendix in the catalogue
  17. Use cases as BPEL
  18. Abstract
  19. Executable

Method

The method of managing the usage scenario process:

  1. Collecting
  2. From usage scenario group
  3. From TC as a whole
  4. From the industry at large
  5. Synthesizing
  6. Building coherent usage scenarios
  7. Driving issues and requirements
  8. Tracking
  9. HTML index page (a.k.a. John’s HTML page)
  10. Catalogue (companion doc)
  11. Reporting
  12. Usage scenario con-call
  13. TC con-call
  14. TC face-to-face
  15. TC documents
  16. Public documents

Guidance

We will start with usage scenarios from the domain of supply chain. Supply chain is relatively horizontal and fortunately there are at least two good supply chain examples of business processes to draw upon:

  1. “Simpl-eb Proof-of-Concept Implementation Guide”, December 2002, EAN International and Uniform Code Council
  2. “Supply Chain Management – Use Case Model”, April 15 2003, WSI

Notes:

  1. The usage scenarios will incorporate abstract processes as well as executable processes.
  2. The usage scenarios can express boundaries, intersections, interoperability and gaps with respect to other standards efforts.
  3. The usage scenarios can be used to drive other aspects of the BPEL TC including issues, requirements, and implementation considerations

Minimum Coverage:

  1. Include actors such as (but not limited to):
  2. Systems and people within an enterprise
  3. Systems and people that span enterprises
  4. Include activities such as (but not limited to):
  5. Synchronous request / Asynchronous request
  6. Collaboration/negotiation (we suspect this is a boundary of BPEL)
  7. Point-to-point / Orchestrated
  8. With characteristics such as (but not limited to):
  9. Scoping
  10. Parallel execution
  11. Serialized (linear) execution
  12. Timeouts
  13. Errors / exceptions
  14. Transactions
  15. Security