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For example, a banking customer requesting a bank load loan is a simple process. The following diagram depicts this process and through that, explains some of the key workflow components of a typical business process.<Diagram>
Figure: Bank loan request process
Process Initiator: In the "Bank Loan Request" process, a banking customer is the client who initiates a loan request.
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Request Processing: This is typically a sub process that produces an output internally during the execution of the business process. It analyzes the input data, verifies loan eligibility of the client through the execution of several logical expressions etc.
Human Task: This is where a human interaction is involved in the business process. In this particular example, a bank employee sends an acknowledgement to the bank customer regarding his loan request approval.
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An instance of a process is a specific example of a process workflow. For example, if a particular process defines a banking customer requesting a bank loadloan, then an example instance of this process is Mr. Smith requesting for 50,000 USD and getting approval for it. Every time a banking customer makes a request for a loan, that request triggers a new process instance in the BPM system, which flows through the elements of the process workflow according to its design.
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Based on the definition of the actual behavior required by a business process, it can be design in two ways using WS-BPEL: abstract and executable. Abstract processes are intended to hide some operational details of the process. As a result, they do not include executable details like process flows. Executable business processes are used to model the actual implementation of the business process.
An abstract process is denoted under the "http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsbpel/2.0/process/abstract" namespace and an executable process is denoted under the "http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsbpel/2.0/process/executable". Additionally, there are syntactical differences between an abstract and an executable BPEL process.
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