A collaborative BPM is used to design Business-to Business exchange. It displays the exchange of messages between partners in top-level processes, each of which can be decomposed into a choreography that represents the sequence of message exchanges. PowerDesigner supports ebXML BPSS v1.01 and v1.04.
ebXML BPSS is a global electronic business standard that allows enterprises of any size, and in any location to safely and securely transact business through the exchange of XML-based messages. The Specification Schema deals with the business process. It identifies such things as the overall business process, the roles, transactions, identification of the business documents used (the DTDs or schemas), document flows, legal aspects, security aspects, business level acknowledgements, and status. A Specification Schema can be used by a software application to configure the business details of conducting business electronically with another organization.
The ebXML BPSS supports the specification of Business Transactions and the choreography of Business Transactions into Business Collaborations.
A specification created using the ebXML BPSS is referred to as an ebXML Business Process Specification. This specification is a declaration of the partners, roles, collaborations, choreography and business document exchanges that make up a business process.
You build a collaborative BPM to describe the collaborations between partners that are all considered at the same level.
In a collaborative BPM, atomic processes correspond to a predefined message exchange between two partners. This exchange only contains a request potentially followed by a response.
Atomic processes (activities) must be defined under a top-level process that represents the sequence of exchanges between partners.
The collaborative BPM describes all the binary collaborations that the process plays with all partners.
Objects you use to build the collaborative BPM are mainly the same as those you use to build an analysis BPM. However, some constraints are added to meet ebXML specific requirements. They are defined in the following sections.