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Concept

SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management (BPM) enables you to model, connect, compile, deploy, and maintain composite business processes.

A process model is an abstraction of a process and describes all the aspects of the process:

  • Activities: steps that are executed within the process

  • Roles: users or systems that execute the activities

  • Artifacts: objects, such as business documents, for example, that are processed by the process

The process composer is the design time of BPM where you create the process models.

The process composer is integrated into SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio . It comprises two perspectives, the Process Modeling perspective to sketch processes, mainly addressed to business analysts, and the Process Development perspective to make the process executable, mainly addressed to developers. For more information, see Two Perspectives Approach .

The process composer provides BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) based process modeling capabilities in both perspectives. BPMN is based on the specification adopted by OMG (Object Management Group). This notation allows easy and intuitive process modeling both for business analyst type of users and developers in one common environment. For more information, see Using BPMN Process Models

The process composer supports all stages of process modeling from high-level definitions of the process down to the enrichment for the actual development into deployment and execution. Life cycle aspects (versioning, transport, and so on) are fully supported through SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment . SAP's BPM notation differentiates activities into human and automated activities. Those activities can be structured within nested processes (subprocesses). Human activities trigger tasks, which are executed through end users, whereas automated activities allow Web services to be executed and therefore provide full integration into SAP's enterprise SOA enabled business applications.

The process desk represents the human interaction management part in BPM. It provides a centralized process and task management. The business users can centrally access and execute their tasks and can additionally display their tasks in a process context. For more information, see Managing Processes and Tasks with the Process Desk. .

The process server represents the runtime services in BPM. The integration into the SAP NetWeaver Administrator enables you to start and stop processes, to monitor and manage processes and tasks, and also to troubleshoot processes. For more information, see Managing and Monitoring Processes and Tasks with the SAP NetWeaver Administrator.