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

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.