The Business Process Modeling
Language (BPML) is a meta-language for the modeling of
business processes, just as XML is a meta-language for the
modeling of business data. BPML provides an abstracted
execution model for collaborative & transactional business
processes based on the concept of a transactional
finite-state machine.
BPML considers e-Business
processes as made of a common public interface and as many
private implementations as process participants. This
enables the public interface of BPML processes to be
described as ebXML business processes or RosettaNet Partner
Interface Processes, independently of their private
implementations.
In much the same way XML
documents are usually described in a specific XML Schema
layered on top of the eXtensible Markup Language, BPML
processes can be described in a specific business process
modeling language layered on top of the extensible BPML XML
Schema. BPML represents business processes as the
interleaving of control flow, data flow, and event flow,
while adding orthogonal design capabilities for business
rules, security roles, and transaction contexts.
Defined as a medium for the
convergence of existing applications toward process-oriented
enterprise computing, BPML offers explicit support for
synchronous and asynchronous distributed transactions, and
therefore can be used as an execution model for embedding
existing applications within e-Business processes as process
components.
The first draft of BPML was
made available to the public on March 8, 2001. 