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Veverke
Veverke

Reputation: 11338

What is a Process Server (BPM related)?

I searched through a couple of questions on the topic "What to use .NET's Windows Workflow for?", (like this and this) and they got me started in grasping the big picture.

But one of the posts mentioned this article, which mentions the term "Process server". More specifically, here's its quote:

It seems like the most obvious use of WF in projects so far is when you’re building a process server product.

I have been trying to find a clear definition of what a process server is, but did not succeed yet.

One will end up in browsing IBM's WebSphere Process Server, which offers a very short overview of it's purpose, among other links - but I could find no clear and precise definition for Process Server (wikipedia has none).

Could anyone help fill the gap?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 160

Answers (1)

Joao
Joao

Reputation: 7476

The word Process might be closely mapped to something like a Workflow. If you reckon that a workflow needs to be executed, separately, by some entity, you will usually have a Server doing it. So there you go, a process server is something that executes workflows.

Btw, as you can read in one of your links, IBM's WebSphere Process Server at some point changed it's name (and backend apparently) to Business Process Manager. So, continuing with the same line of thinking, and this is me speculating on why they've chosen that name, maybe they thought they were not only executing but also enabling customers to manage workflows. Manage ends up being a more broad and inclusive word (and prettier for the sales guys to use as well :).

WF4 knows how to execute workflows so, yes, it can be used to implement a Process Server.

See, this is my very loose definition of it, it might be greatly improved and completely open to discussion. It really depends on which path you want to take on that discussion.

Upvotes: 1

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