The new version of business process management solution JBoss BPM Suite will increase the role of using microservices
At the Red Hat Summit 2016 conference, financial system architects gave a presentation on their experiences using microservices.
During the Red Hat Summit conference, financial experts discussed how banks and other financial institutions re-use business process management systems in conjunction with microservices. The new approach uses Red Hat JBoss middleware enhancements that simplify application development. Now, corporate information system architects can separate small components that manage business processes from rules, thereby accelerating the introduction of specialized financial products to the market.
"With the help of microservices, you can easily update the components of a business process management system," said Andrew Bonham, corporate systems architect for the American corporation Capital One. “In traditional service-oriented architectures, the services are managed by the coordinator. Microservices use a more reactive architecture, in which each service is programmed in advance. ”
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Bonham recommends that architects of corporate systems divide processes into smaller components, integrating business process management mechanisms into applications, and use rule imitations. This approach allows banks to accelerate the testing of new financial products. In addition, banks are developing metadata management tools to track the versions of the rules used in processing transactions. This simplifies the separation of rule management from business process management infrastructure without compromising risk management and compliance.
Bonham drew attention to the fact that as business process management mechanisms are expanded, companies tend to turn them into one monolithic application. He recommended not to enlarge the components of the systems and not to create dependencies between them, but to ensure the interaction between the components through atomic operations. He also noted that a monolithic application is characterized by a large number of dependencies, which makes it difficult to update it.
JBoss supports various approaches to the integration of stand-alone and embedded business process management mechanisms in enterprise applications. A stand-alone business process management mechanism runs on a separate server that communicates with other processes using REST interfaces. According to Bonham, this approach helps to separate business processes from the API, which simplifies the experimental verification of concepts and allows you to maintain the structure of the API.
“It is also useful in situations where it is necessary to use a deployed control system in several departments or processes,” added Bonham.
The meeting participants also concluded that it is important to consider the location of the deployment of the control mechanism and the application in the data center, since the use of one mechanism by several applications can be problematic. During one of its projects, Capital One placed applications in different data centers, which caused delays in sharing information.
Bonham noted that embedding a business process management engine in an application improves its performance by eliminating the overhead associated with network requests. In addition, embedding provides a number of additional features that are missing from the integration of the API.
“This approach needs to be used in stateless transactions, as well as where the rules are executed, and state saving is not required,” explained Bonham.
One of the topics of the meeting was the experience of the company Infosys Ltd., which transfers its basic banking application to the infrastructure based on a private cloud.
Finacle corporate platform handles 16.5% of all company banking transactions. Peter Loop, deputy vice president and chief technical architect of Infosys, said that the company intends to move from writing service code to customizing applications. The meaning of this transition is to enable various business areas to quickly create new banking products.
According to Loup, implementing automatic calls to the system is a snap; it is more difficult to integrate into the system business processes that are executed in manual mode. Infosys has developed an adapter for assigning tasks manually, thanks to which automated and manual business processes are now managed in one place.
Loop noted that this approach works well, but there is a problem with managing transaction metadata. To solve it, Infosys developed metadata for its application that corresponds to the sets of rules applicable to business processes. This allows you to customize banking products (for example, certain types of loans) using spreadsheets. Managers integrate rules into new banking products faster than the developer implements them in the application programmatically.
Emanuel Montrasi, lead developer of the Italian company SIA, noted that there is another effective approach, which is to create a simulation environment for testing new rules. It gives business analysts the opportunity to imitate new rules and verify the correctness of their work. After imitation, a new rule can be sent to the approver, who allows its use in a business environment.
According to Loup, microservices make it possible to implement the internal infrastructure separately from the rule management. Through this approach, the bank can update the basic infrastructure without affecting the rules, and specialists in various business areas change the rules without involving the IT service to change the infrastructure.
Loop also noted the importance of applying a version control system to the rules. Infosys has developed a source management system that works with spreadsheets used by managers. Loop added that this system is important for risk management and compliance, as banks need to associate transactions with metadata, which contain information about the rules that apply to these transactions.
During the Red Hat Summit conference, financial experts discussed how banks and other financial institutions re-use business process management systems in conjunction with microservices. The new approach uses Red Hat JBoss middleware enhancements that simplify application development. Now, corporate information system architects can separate small components that manage business processes from rules, thereby accelerating the introduction of specialized financial products to the market.
"With the help of microservices, you can easily update the components of a business process management system," said Andrew Bonham, corporate systems architect for the American corporation Capital One. “In traditional service-oriented architectures, the services are managed by the coordinator. Microservices use a more reactive architecture, in which each service is programmed in advance. ”
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Bonham recommends that architects of corporate systems divide processes into smaller components, integrating business process management mechanisms into applications, and use rule imitations. This approach allows banks to accelerate the testing of new financial products. In addition, banks are developing metadata management tools to track the versions of the rules used in processing transactions. This simplifies the separation of rule management from business process management infrastructure without compromising risk management and compliance.
Avoid scaling up system components
Bonham drew attention to the fact that as business process management mechanisms are expanded, companies tend to turn them into one monolithic application. He recommended not to enlarge the components of the systems and not to create dependencies between them, but to ensure the interaction between the components through atomic operations. He also noted that a monolithic application is characterized by a large number of dependencies, which makes it difficult to update it.
JBoss supports various approaches to the integration of stand-alone and embedded business process management mechanisms in enterprise applications. A stand-alone business process management mechanism runs on a separate server that communicates with other processes using REST interfaces. According to Bonham, this approach helps to separate business processes from the API, which simplifies the experimental verification of concepts and allows you to maintain the structure of the API.
“It is also useful in situations where it is necessary to use a deployed control system in several departments or processes,” added Bonham.
The meeting participants also concluded that it is important to consider the location of the deployment of the control mechanism and the application in the data center, since the use of one mechanism by several applications can be problematic. During one of its projects, Capital One placed applications in different data centers, which caused delays in sharing information.
Bonham noted that embedding a business process management engine in an application improves its performance by eliminating the overhead associated with network requests. In addition, embedding provides a number of additional features that are missing from the integration of the API.
“This approach needs to be used in stateless transactions, as well as where the rules are executed, and state saving is not required,” explained Bonham.
Make settings, not program
One of the topics of the meeting was the experience of the company Infosys Ltd., which transfers its basic banking application to the infrastructure based on a private cloud.
Finacle corporate platform handles 16.5% of all company banking transactions. Peter Loop, deputy vice president and chief technical architect of Infosys, said that the company intends to move from writing service code to customizing applications. The meaning of this transition is to enable various business areas to quickly create new banking products.
According to Loup, implementing automatic calls to the system is a snap; it is more difficult to integrate into the system business processes that are executed in manual mode. Infosys has developed an adapter for assigning tasks manually, thanks to which automated and manual business processes are now managed in one place.
Loop noted that this approach works well, but there is a problem with managing transaction metadata. To solve it, Infosys developed metadata for its application that corresponds to the sets of rules applicable to business processes. This allows you to customize banking products (for example, certain types of loans) using spreadsheets. Managers integrate rules into new banking products faster than the developer implements them in the application programmatically.
Emanuel Montrasi, lead developer of the Italian company SIA, noted that there is another effective approach, which is to create a simulation environment for testing new rules. It gives business analysts the opportunity to imitate new rules and verify the correctness of their work. After imitation, a new rule can be sent to the approver, who allows its use in a business environment.
Separate control systems from regulations and infrastructure.
According to Loup, microservices make it possible to implement the internal infrastructure separately from the rule management. Through this approach, the bank can update the basic infrastructure without affecting the rules, and specialists in various business areas change the rules without involving the IT service to change the infrastructure.
Loop also noted the importance of applying a version control system to the rules. Infosys has developed a source management system that works with spreadsheets used by managers. Loop added that this system is important for risk management and compliance, as banks need to associate transactions with metadata, which contain information about the rules that apply to these transactions.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/315288/
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