Dralasoft SOAPs Up Workflow Engine

The new capability gives Dralasoft Workflow 3.0 the ability to pull trading partners, collaborating over the Web, into complex business processes.

"We can crunch large numbers of workflows, with limited memory," said Suresh Ramaswamy, president and CTO of Dralasoft, Westminster, Colo. "Plus, you'll never find visual tools that are as crisp and rich on other BPM tools, as you will with pure plays."

Dralasoft competes against other BPM-only vendors Savvion and Lombardi Software, among others. Its software is also a core component of Xerox's Docushare, a Web-based document and content-management system.

Dralasoft Workflow comprises three modules: Dralasoft Workflow Engine, the runtime component; DralaSoft Studio, for designing workflow processes with a drag-and-drop interface; and Dralasoft Workflow Manager, for monitoring and analyzing process performance.

With SOAP, the three modules can now work with a variety of Web-services standards and frameworks, including Microsoft.Net, according to Dralasoft.

The new version also adds a new process for creating Web-based forms. In the past, developers who wanted to add fill-in-the-blank pages -- such as claims documents or order forms -- for online business processes had to build forms with a different application and then map them to the workflow. With version 3.0, designers simply describe the form within Workflow Studio, which then automatically creates and maps the form to the process, Dralasoft said.