A Pattern Language for Process Execution and Integration Design in Service-Oriented Architectures

Abstract

Abstract. Process-driven SOAs are using processes to orchestrate services. Designing a non-trivial process-driven SOA involves many difficult design and architectural decisions. Examples are: Different kinds of processes exist: longrunning, business-oriented and short-running, technical processes. How to best integrate them and how to map them to execution platforms? A SOA has many different stakeholders, such as business analysts, management, software designers, architects, and developers, as well as many different types of models these stakeholders need to work with. How to present each of them with the best view on the models they need for their work? A realistic process-driven SOA contains many systems that need to be integrated, such as various process engines, services, and backend systems, running on heterogeneous technologies and platforms. How to perform integration in a way that is maintainable and scalable? This article introduces a pattern language that deals with process modeling, execution, and integration. Its main goal is to help solution architects, as well as process and service designers, to master the challenges in designing a stable and evolvable process-driven SOA.

A pattern language for service-based platform integration and adaptation

“…This pattern language documents interconnected design decisions by drawing from existing pattern material, such as patterns for general software design [Gamma et al 1994], software architecture [Buschmann et al 2000;Avgeriou and Zdun 2005], distributed system design [Buschmann et al 2007a], enterprise application architecture [Fowler 2003], messaging [Hohpe and Woolf 2004], remoting middleware [Völter et al 2005], serviceoriented systems [Hentrich and Zdun 2009], service design [Daigneau 2012], and process-driven SOA [Hentrich and Zdun 2012].…”

“…Zdun and Hentrich [Hentrich and Zdun 2009;] describe a pattern language for process integration architectures. This pattern language can be combined with the patterns described in this paper, by using either a workflow or a business process engine (called macroflow engine in [Hentrich and Zdun 2009;).…”

“…However, those patterns have been presented with a different focus, such as general software design [Gamma et al 1994], software architecture [Buschmann et al 2000;Avgeriou and Zdun 2005], distributed system design [Buschmann et al 2007a], enterprise application architecture [Fowler 2003], messaging [Hohpe and Woolf 2004], remoting middleware [Völter et al 2005], service-oriented systems [Hentrich and Zdun 2009], service design [Daigneau 2012] and process-driven SOA [Hentrich and Zdun 2012]. The contribution of this paper is to survey and to organize the existing patterns and design decisions in a comprehensive pattern language for the service-based integration and adaptation of platforms.…”

Integrity and Confidentiality Annotations for Service Interfaces in SoaML Models

“…Modelling support for systems adhering to the SOA architectural style is provided, e.g., by the UML extension SoaML [1]. In a process-driven SOA, one or more components act as process engines and orchestrate service interactions in order to implement business processes [2].…”

“…This is the major representational prerequisite for2 Note that the SoaML specification points to the usage of Activities for modelling control flows between operations which are required or provided by Interfaces defined on a ServiceInterface[1].…”