The Business Choreography Language (BCL) A Domain-Specific Language for Global Choreographies Institute for Software Technology and Interactive Systems Vienna University of Technology Favoritenstraße 9-11/ Vienna. Austria/Europe Tel.: +43 (1) , Fax: +43 (1) Thomas Motal, Marco Zapletal, Hannes Werthner Electronic Commerce Group

Agenda The UN/CEFACT ‘ s Modelling Methodology (UMM) Global Choreographies by Example The Business Choreography Language (BCL) Conclusion and Future Work 2

3 1 The UMM

UN/CEFACT's Modeling Methodology (UMM) Graphical modeling technique for inter-organizational (B2B) business processes Concentrates on business semantics – it is implementation neutral UMM is defined as a UML profile on top of UML Customizes UML for modeling B2B UMM is used in order to define global business choreographies Provides a procedure similar to a software development process from requirements elicitation to process design 4

What Actually is a Global Choreography? If each organization defines its own choreography with business partners from an observer perspective, interoperability is unlikely UMM describes collaborative business processes from a global and neutral point of view 5 BuyerSeller Collaboration

UMM Terminology Business Process Group of related activities that together create customer value Traditionally intra-organizational, but also inter-organizational (= business collaboration) Business Collaboration Performed by two business partners (= binary collaboration) or more business partners (= multi-party collaboration) Complex, composed of many activities (=business transactions) between the partners Business Transaction Always a binary interaction Realized by a request from one side and an optional response from the other side 6

The UMM 2.0 Architecture Development process of the UMM Business Requirements View (BRV) Business Choreography View (BCV) Business Information View (BIV) 7 7 UMMBRVBCVBIV

8 2 Global Choreographies

The Business Transaction View 9 Document Exchange Business Transaction Patterns Binary Message-Exchange

The Business Collaboration View 10 Role-Mapping Re-use of Business Transactions

Essential Concepts for Global Choreographies „MUST HAVE“ concepts based on best practices in business transaction modelling (included in UMM) Business collaboration Business transaction Business transaction patterns Quality of service parameters Business documents Re-use of business transactions Role mapping between transactions and global choreographies „NICE TO HAVE“ concepts from other business process modelling approaches Timer events, event-based XOR Compensations 11

12 3 The BCL

Challenges Encompass essential requirements for global inter-organizational business processes MUST HAVE concepts NICE TO HAVE concepts Overcome shortcomings of the UMM profile ≈ 40 classes defined in the meta-model Significant amount of modeling artefacts UML visualization has a lack in expressiveness and readability Find an appropriate graphical notation 13

BCL Business Transactions 14 Document Exchange Compensation Event Business Transaction Patterns Binary Message-Exchange UML Profile BCL

BCL Business Collaborations 15 UML Profile BCL (cut-out) Role-Mapping Re-use of Business Transactions Events

Re-Use and Compensation Transactions 16

BCL Hard Facts A domain-specific language for modeling global choreographies Comprises the essential concepts of UMM choreographies Implementation neutral models Custom notation for global choreography models Enriched meta-model by additional concepts Timer event Event-based XOR Compensation 17

18 4 Conclusion

At the End of the Day we elaborated and listed the essential concepts for modeling global choreographies by using UMM as a starting point... we developed a domain-specific language for modelling inter-organizational business processes The BCL comprises the essential concepts of the UMM Added events to the BCL... we overcame the shortcomings of the current UMM profile Alternative notation, raising the grade of abstraction Reduction of modeling elements and modeling artefacts Not restricted to UML 19

What’s Next? Code generation Model-2-Model transformations (e.g. local choreography models) Model-2-Code transformations (e.g. BPEL, Windows Workflow) Run-time validation of global choreographies Implementation of soft-constraints Raises the modeling experience Higher model quality 20

21 5 Questions? Thomas Motal, Marco Zapletal, Hannes Werthner E lectronic C ommerce Group Institute for Software Technology and Interactive Systems Vienna University of Technology Favoritenstraße 9-11/ Vienna. Austria/Europe Tel.: +43 (1) , Fax: +43 (1)

B2C vs. B2B 22 B2C Server dominates the business process Customer reacts on the fly B2B Applications must interact with each other Applications must follow an agreed  Business process  Business document structure

Business Collaborations in the BCL 23 Events Re-use of Business Transactions Role-Mapping

Business Collaborations in the BCL 24 Events Re-use of Business Transactions Role-Mapping Compensation Event

The UMM 2.0 Architecture 25 UMMBRVBCVBIV

UMM Choreographies in Action: The Scenario 26 What kind of apples do you have? We provide 5 alternatives:... What is the price of the 2 nd and 4 th option? The 2 nd is X$ and the 4 th is Y$ I take 5 pieces of the 2 nd one. Fine Buyer Seller

Quality of Service Parameters 27 Binary Message-Exchange Document Exchange Interaction Compensation Event Business Transaction Patterns

Shortcomings of the UML Profile for UMM Significant amount of modeling artefacts ≈ 40 classes defined in the meta-model Extensive set of modeling elements UML visualization has a lack in expressiveness and readability Run-time model validation is not possible OCL is currently not supported by the majority of nowadays UML tools Code generation is complex and heavily depends on the software tool 28

BCL Business Transaction Business Transaction Pattern (1) Two-/One-Way (2) Document Exchange (3) Requesting documents (3.1) Responding documents (3.2) Binary Message Flow (4) Compensation event (5) Quality of Service Parameter (6) 29

Business Transactions in the BCL 30 Document Exchange Compensation Event Business Transaction Patterns Binary Message-Exchange