Service Oriented Architecture BPM (SOA)

SOA is a process language that allows you to design the orchestration of your processes by Web services without specifying any particular platform or language. You cannot generate from SOA, but you can import WSDL files to populate your model with service providers.

Having developed your model, you can select Tools > Generate Business Process Model to generate a model targeting another process language.

Note: The SOA process language is very close to BPEL4WS (see BPEL4WS 1.1 and WS-BPEL 2.0), except that it supports attaching any type of operation to a process (BPEL4WS only supports attaching One-Way and Request-Response operations) and does not allow the definition of correlation keys for sent messages.

Business Process Diagrams (SOA)
Business process diagrams for SOA and other executable languages contain additional objects that allow you to model the implementation of processes through Web services modeled as service providers.
Process Service Diagrams (SOA)
A process service diagram provides a graphical view of the services, operations, and interfaces available in your system.
Events (BPM)
An event is an instantaneous and observable occurrence during the course of a business process, which triggers it to respond. For example, it can be unexpected data returned by a web service or a deadline.
Service Providers (BPM)
To invoke a Web service, you need the WSDL from the service, which describes the port, service name, operations, and messages that the process needs to communicate with the service. Web services are modeled in PowerDesigner as service providers.
Operations (BPM)
An operation is contained by a service interface, and which comprises input and output elements defined in terms of messages or message parts.
Variables (BPM)
A variable is a data container, which holds temporary values that can be passed between processes as input and output parameters, and which are important for their correct execution. For example, variables are useful to determine routing decisions or to build the messages a process has to send.
Correlation Keys (BPM)
A correlation key is a set of variables that is used to identify a process instance in order to route the messages that apply to it. For example, during a flight booking process on the Web, a registered client may have put a ticket in his wish list, but needs further information before booking it. When he comes back to his wish list, the correlation key allows the retrieval of his flight ticket, so he can proceed to the payment.
Data Transformations (BPM)
A data transformation is an object that allows you to copy data from a source container to a target container, and also to calculate the value of an expression and store it in a variable.