BPEL or UML? Let's hear your opinions...

[mjeynes]

Which is the business modeling language of choice? What do you believe the industry should use?

[SeanIT]

In my environment it depends on what I want to do. For deployment, BPEL is the way to go. My question is really UML or BPMN for the modeling notation? I am interested in what people are using.

[brsilver]

For business-oriented process modeling, I think definitely BPMN. UML is oriented to software architects not business analysts. BPMN includes "advanced" process semantics, like event-triggered exception flows, message flows for choreography (a bit in flux), and compensation of business transactions... but exposes them in a way that business analysts could be trained to understand. This is BPMN's big advance over traditional swimlane flowcharting. Now we just need to teach people how to use it!

[jbasrai]

Currently there is work underway to create a UML profile using BPMN to help align the two. Its important to note that BPMN and UML came from two different perspectives, BPMN from a business modeling perspective and UML from an object perspective. Also there is work underway to define BPMN 2.0 to make these linkages more explicit.