What is Business Process Management Notation BPMN

2-2 Modeling and Implementation Guide for Oracle Business Process Management

2.1.2.1 Process Instances

A process instance refers to the specific instance of a business process. While business process can generally define how an organization performs its work, a process instance refers to the work of a specific person within that organization. In Oracle BPM, this person is referred to as a process participant. For example, the Sales Quote example shows the overall definition, or model, of a business process, including the roles of the process participants who are responsible for performing the work. It defines how a sales quote is created and approved and defines the types of people responsible for performing that work. In contrast, a process instance refers to a specific sales quote and the specific people responsible for approving it. This distinction between process and process instance is important because Oracle BPM enables you to model business processes, convert them into running business applications, and manage the process instances created within those applications.

2.1.2.2 Process Tokens

Process tokens are an abstract concept in BPMN. They refer to the current point of execution within a process. A business process can have multiple tokens that indicate that the process is running in multiple paths. For example, gateways are often used to split the path of a process. Splitting a process path creates multiple process tokens.

2.1.3 Flow Objects

Flow objects are the BPMN components that represent the work performed within a process. The following sections describe the types of flow objects available in BPMN.

2.1.3.1 Tasks

In Oracle BPM, tasks are used to represent the work performed by a process.

2.1.3.2 Events

Events define something that happens during a process.

2.1.3.3 Gateways

Gateways are used to determine the flow of your process.

2.1.3.4 Sequence Flows

Sequence flows are used to connect flow objects.

2.1.4 Data Objects

While flow objects are used to define the behavior of a business process, data objects are used to define and store the information used by a business process. Data objects are variables that are defined during the modeling and implementation of a process. A process instance uses these variables to store specific information. For example, the Sales Quote example defines several data objects used to store information about the sales quote. At run time, the process instance generate and stores specific values for these variables.