Motivation
Oracle has recently launched the new BPM Suite, a platform that supports both BPMN 2.0 and BPEL standards and is specifically built to support human and system centric processes. This innovation marks a significant evolution of the previous BPEL based platform. For many years, and long before the BPEL engine, Oracle provided Oracle Workflow as a set of PL/SQL Packages deployed with the database, and many organizations have made large investments automating their human centric business processes leveraging Oracle Workflow. For some organizations it represented a considerable investment but also a significant return.As the Oracle Workflow reaches the end of its life cycle and taking into consideration that Oracle has not yet provided an upgrade path, we developed an approach (methodology and tools) to support such evolution.Our methodology enables organizations to perform an incremental migration of legacy workflow applications to the new BPM platform, preserving business data and at the same time leveraging from the new sophisticated features of the new BPM suite, providing more powerful tools to the business users and the IT managers.
Methodology
Workflow Application Assessment This step encompasses an initial survey and analysis to determine the migration strategy, the high level requirements and the critical issues. Metrics are used to account the complexity and size of processes, interfaces and logic to migrate to the BPM Suite.
Analysis and Planning Detailed analysis and project plan; new business requirements analysis; application and integration architecture definition.
Test Case Definition A test case definition approach is used, covering all existing application usage scenarios.
Usability Requirements New applications require new user interaction paradigms. Significant technology changes suggest a complete revision of usability practices. We guarantee that the new applications are designed with the most adequate paradigm, regardless the one used in legacy applications. This is a key aspect since usability is a required quality for any modern day solution; hence it is a crucial success factor of modern projects
Migration Development This phase covers the development process based on Link Consulting’s migration methodology and tools.
Acceptance Tests Execute the previously designed test cases, supported by a test control tool.
