IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing business processes

Business vocabularies

A business vocabulary is a Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) document that serves as a container for the business items, messages, and errors that can be exported and used in a Business Design environment inside WebSphere Business Compass or IBM WebSphere Business Modeler.

The contents of a business vocabulary provide business-friendly representations of more technical objects that they are based on.

For example, the business items in a business vocabulary are based on more technical business objects, with meaningful names and aliases specified for underlying attributes. These business items can be later be used to represent the data flow in process maps that are authored in a Business Design environment inside WebSphere Business Compass or IBM WebSphere Business Modeler.

Similarly, a message that is contained in a business vocabulary can be a simplified and renamed representation of the complex data that is passed between business service operations. The business user that is working with these objects to design their processes and business services sees only the business-relevant names and attributes, without having to worry about the underlying technical details of these elements.

After a vocabulary is created, it can be exported from IBM Integration Designer as a project interchange file, along with the business services that reference elements within this vocabulary. This file can be uploaded to a Business Design environment inside WebSphere Business Compass or IBM WebSphere Business Modeler where the business user can work with the elements inside the vocabulary and service documents.

When a business vocabulary is created in IBM Integration Designer, and then subsequently uploaded to WebSphere Business Compass or IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, it is a read only document. The user can reference elements within the vocabulary, and can refer to business services from within process maps, but the elements cannot be modified or deleted.


Example: Using Business Vocabularies

Len is a business analyst working within WebSphere Business Compass to create a process map that documents the process for submitting and evaluating new loan applications. Later on, this process map might be refined by a technical business analyst in IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, where more technical details are added to create a deployable process. Ultimately, this process might be deployed as an application in IBM Process Server.

Before he begins his mapping project, he ask Myra, an IT developer that works in IBM Integration Designer, to provide him with a business vocabulary that contains business items, messages, and errors that are based on the actual business data structures currently used in deployed financing applications. He also requests business-friendly representations of the service operations related to the deployed financing applications in the form of business services.

Myra creates a business vocabulary in IBM Integration Designer called FinancingVocab. She imports the .xsds and locates the following business objects used in the financing domain into her IBM Integration Designer workspace: CustRecord, CreditScore, LoanApp.

She creates a business item called CustRecord based on the CustRecord business object, but gives it the display name "Customer Record" so that when Len is working with the data in his process maps, this is the name that show up on his diagrams.

The CustRecord business object is a complex data type, including a lot of data that Len is probably not interested in, such as the creation date for the record, the customer's social security number, and so on. By default, none of the attributes of the underlying business object will be visible to Len when he looks at the business item in WebSphere Business Compass. However, Len might be interested in seeing certain business item details while building his process maps, such as the CustClass attribute which determines whether a customer is offered certain types of interest rate discounts. In order for this attribute to be visible to Len in the business item, Myra must create an alias for that attribute, and provide a business-friendly name such as "Customer Status" so that Len, and other users of his process map, can understand what the attribute contains.

Myra also knows that there is an existing service interface, FinanceService, that contains service operations that are relevant to the financing domain: GetCreditScore, GetCurrentIntRate, CalculateAmortSched. To provide Len with an easy way to work with these service operations in his process maps, she creates a business service called "FinancingServices", and adds business service operations that are based on the operations in the FinanceService interface. By default, the input and output messages required by these different service operations are created in the business vocabulary document that she associated with the business service when she created it. These default messages have names like "GetCreditScoreRequestMsg_Input" and "GetCreditScoreRequestMsg_Output".

Myra renames these messages to give them more business-friendly display names ("Credit Score Request" and "Credit Score Result") and she also associates the message types with existing business items in the vocabulary: CustomerRecord and CreditScore.

When she exports the business vocabulary from IBM Integration Designer as a project interchange file, both the business vocabulary and business service are exported, along with the.xsd and .wsdl definitions that underlie the contents of these business artifacts. The business vocabulary and business service are rendered as documents in the Business Design environment inside WebSphere Business Compass or IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, and the underlying .xsd and .wsdl files are not visible to the business user. However, when the business artifacts are transformed into a IBM WebSphere Business Modeler project, these technical artifacts are again visible, and the technical details of the process can be further defined for eventual deployment.

For more information about how business vocabulary artifacts move between different WebSphere BPM products, see Business process design using business vocabularies


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