About this article
This represents the conclusion of my experiences in various SOA customer engagements during the last years. The article contains a lot of advice and hand-on information on how to do a successful project with IBM’s business process management (BPM) stack, especially with IBM WebSphere Process Server. It was published on IBM developerWorks in late September 2008.
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Introduction
Part 1 of this two-part article series dives deeply into the operational reference architecture of IBM® WebSphere® Process Server. This article introduces you to concepts, such as Service Component Architecture (SCA), Business Process Choreographer (BPC) and Service Integration Bus (SIB) in the context of WebSphere Process Server, and shows you how they work together to build a secure transactional runtime environment for your SOA. You’ll learn about the fundamental technologies that are used to build a reliable infrastructure for SCA-based business applications. This enables you to identify components in your organization’s infrastructure that are crucial for the success of your SOA efforts.
WebSphere Process Server reference model
Nowadays every (IT) person, whether you take an IT Specialist or a more business-focused consultant, has a personal definition of what SOA is or is not. This begins with a thousand and one explanations of the term “service” and ends with millions of possible implementation techniques. This article does not attempt to define SOA but instead tries to establish a common high-level understanding of what SOA means and the role WebSphere Process Server plays in a service-oriented world. Finally, you will be introduced to WebSphere Process Server’s building blocks and technical details that will help you understand WebSphere Process Server architecture from an operations perspective.
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