Using iProcess suite 10.6, business analysts and IT share the same core Tibco Business Studio engine that was introduced for all of Tibco’s integration offerings a few months ago. Using Business Studio, the process designer works in the modeling engine with high level business views, while IT gets a different view that is diagrammed by source and target systems on which these processes are implemented.
This avoids the necessity of business staff handing off files to IT, who had to then generate XPDL, an XML-based process workflow language on which Tibco’s’ iProcess tool (which came from the Staffware acquisition several years ago). The new version keeps XPDL under the hood, which is probably a good thing, as it avoids the need for IT to learn another XML language.
Other enhancements to iProcess 10.6 include a more granular SOA interface, so you can query details of a process through a SOAP web services request such as a specific case number or check audit trails. Before, you would have had to develop such query capabilities through Java or .NET programming.
In the same light, the new version improves support for sub-processes, which are triggered conditionally. A classic example is the request for credit from a party that has borderline history. The rules could be designed within the WSDL service definition, in addition to existing support for external rules engines.
