BPEL Process Manager Perfect For Midmarket

BPEL Process Manager server plays a key role in Oracle's business solutions, which consist of business intelligence, integration solutions, portals and various enterprise applications—all communicating with each other using a common identity management system and a common set of development tools.

BPEL Process Manager is primarily used to integrate systems to create end-to-end business flows. Using an SOA approach, the software orchestrates new business processes by combining Java applications with EDI, messaging applications, mainframe systems, databases and packaged applications such as SAP. The software presents the end result of these processes via a common interface for all involved applications. BPEL Process Manager encapsulates and modularizes business logic from disparate applications running in the background.

Oracle's enterprise service bus solution relies on its application server. However, since every component does not need to run on the application server, BPEL Process Manager can serve as a centralized hub for every system but not necessarily manage every component.

Under the hood, BPEL Process Manager adheres to BPEL standards, so the server provides a binding abstraction between business logic using technology that separates components from processes, leaving little dependence between the two. The server is also platform-independent, so it not only runs on the Oracle Application Server but also can be deployed with JBoss, WebLogic and Websphere.

What's more, the software's BPEL engine takes advantage of in-memory allocations controlled by server sessions via a configurable architecture that invokes stateless or persistent BPEL processes. Designers have the option to define whether a process should persist in a database or remain in memory. Persistent processes guarantee that a server failure will not corrupt or delete any task.

In addition to an Eclipse plug-in, BPEL Process Manager includes a JDeveloper plug-in called BPEL Designer. JDeveloper plays multiple roles in the development process and combines multiple tasks within the same workspace. With JDeveloper, users can design BPEL process flows, develop J2EE applications, integrate components into a process and map data directly to objects from multiple data sources. Surprisingly, installation took only a few minutes, and JDeveloper's user interface was easy to use, clear and concise. BPEL Process Manager provides a number of wizards to accelerate development. For instance, by right-clicking on a Partner Link area, designers can invoke the Adapter Wizard, which defines multiple access methods that then are mapped to a process. BPEL Process Manager also includes adapters for file services and FTP, Java Message Service, Oracle's Advanced Queuing, databases and Oracle Applications services, which can communicate by using JNDI and database interfaces with various Oracle business applications.

In addition to an Oracle JDBC driver, BPEL Process Manager's database adapter provides a basic JDBC-ODBC bridge to external databases. CRN Test Center engineers would have liked to see more native drivers bundled with the software and hope that Oracle will add them in the final release. In addition to various business connectivity adapters, the server also uses third-party adapters such as Information Builders' Iway to connect to legacy systems.

To provide a more comprehensive solution, Oracle's proprietary Trading Community Architecture (TCA) is an optional add-on. TCA includes a repository with its own user interface to manage the quality of customer data. TCA can help integrate customer data with business processes and provide snapshots of customer activity regardless of the system on which the data resides. When combined with TCA, BPEL Process Manager can improve productivity by encouraging more collaborative interactions between employees, customers and partners.

Oracle provides hundreds of tutorials and many sample code snippets to help developers combine business processes with external components. Both JDeveloper and BPEL Process Manager include extensive documentation. In addition to Oracle's PartnerNetwork program offerings, partners receive deep product discounts and direct technical support. Oracle declined to disclose average reseller margins. BPEL Process Manager is priced at $40,000.