Making the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Flexible

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is a process modeling language which uses standard control constructs to define a workflow. But, today‘s enterprises need to be agile to cope with increasing change, uncertainty and unpredictability. Therefore, automating agile business processes is still a challenge as they are normally knowledge intensive and can be planned to a limited degree. The execution order depends heavily on the case, which has to be performed. So instead of modeling all possible cases and situations which might occur in a knowledge intensive process we introduced an approach which uses semantic technologies and rules. Business rules can be utilized to allow for case-specific adaptation of process steps. A component was developed which allow during run-time rules to automatically detect the state of the case and to determine the necessary process adaptations.