Understanding The Impact Of E-Business Technologies On Companies

Answers to the following questions from QL will form a core part of your investigation.

1.How should QL leverage their knowledge in web services for them to facilitate the use of a technology, such as  Java/J2EE/.NET, in such a manner that the web services communication is independent of the actual implementation?

2.How can QL benefit holistically by using BPEL technology? Describe the benefits of such a technology in detail.

3.How can QL ensure their implementation can easily adapt with changing business conditions?

4.How can QL coordinate the simultaneous web service conversations?
How can QL ascertain that the loan application is submitted to their partner finance companies simultaneously? How can advanced joining patterns be utilised such as when one conversation is cancelled and or when the user switches to another conversation?

5.How can QL manage server upgrades without stopping currently running web applications and services? What happens when the web application becomes highly successful and needs to scale to handle thousands of applications per day?

6.QL requires a way to effectively handle multiple versions of around 10,000 active loan applications so that they can effectively manage multiple versions of the orchestration logic while being able to connect the history of a drawdown to all the conversations related to that specific loan request.
 
In order for QL to better understand the BEPL and web services technology it has been suggested the following questions would also require some attention:

1.What are the common features that a BPEL engine must have?

2.Can all BPEL engines effectively define and implement integration processes?

3.How important is web services (including orchestration) portability and vendor independence ?

4.Organisations run many disparate systems and servers – why is it vital for a BPEL engine to co-exist seamlessly with pre-existing technologies?

Overview of Technology's Impact on Companies

Technology in the modern world has grown very rapidly whereby the systems and software that were used there before have become obsoletes within a given specified period of time. The reason behind this has been driven by situation of where innovators have invented and discovered new features being added to existing devices. Advancement in technology does not care with duration the device or the preceding tech has been in the market. In this concept the idea is understanding how technology has been applied in making the business done electronically. There are many things and situations which has led to the influence of the national economy. The existence of the electricity and the internet has led to the formation of an Electronic Businesses globally. (E-Business). Many economies in specific countries have changed constantly and thus this has challenged the organizations. The following factors have impacted company negatively or positively in so many ways.

• Globalization
• Reduction of cost
• Management of Customer relationship (CRM)
• Faster changing markets.

Enterprises has seen the urge to adapt in the changing markets and use the business technologies in the market to help them in staying competitive and much more face the E-economy transitions in a more standard and brave manner without fearing of the outcome. Many people will only see E-business as selling and doing some markets of the services and goods via the internet while the reality on the ground shows different opinions. EBusiness covers a wide range of concepts and terminologies as it is neither limited to the internet nor to the WWW (Worldwide Web).  E-commerce has used several and many technologies which are ranging from the EDI to BPEL to Emails. In E-business technologies the fact is that internet application and IT in processes of businesses has led to new and remarkable ways through which business has been conceived and organized. This in turn has led to a innovative nodes myriads in the management department, structures of the organization which are new and the information architectures as well as the laws, rules and the corporate strategies set by the governing body (BEATRICE, 2013). From the above understanding on the concepts of E-Business Technologies it will true to say that it focuses on integrating IT with the processes of business and the strategies within the dynamic legal and the environment of the business (Owatta, 2018).

E-Business has dominated the current markets globally, before one understand how it works it is advisable for one to know the types of e-business that has been using the mentioned technologies’ such as BPEL as proposed by Quick Loans company which aims to expand and integrates its web application. Some of the types of ecommerce are such as the following.

1. Business-to-business (B2B) - this is a type of business where transactions are done between organizations or businesses. It does not at deal with the sales made within the roof of the organization. A good example of a technology applied here is the Electronic Data Interchange.
2. Business-to-Customer (B2C) - this is a concept that shows transactions being done between the business or organization’s and the individual customers. A good example is like home banking.
3. Business-to-Employee- this is where the companies has focused so much on the intranet and thus the business include the employee in the e-business concepts. A good technology applied here is like the use of Emails where people can communicate within the specified intranet and much more.

Types of E-Business

There are so many ways in which technologies can be used by E-business in making it a success in the given company. Quick Loans Company want to integrate such a technology so that the existing applications can work well with the new developed software technology. Some of the reasons for the new technology in Quick Loans Company is to introduce the concept of interoperability and compatibility and this is applied when they want to link with other businesses and information sources.  The other idea that has been brought about by QL’s is tech that will be able to handle various interactions on the basis of the customer, agents and even the mobile apps.  There are some web services technologies that has been considered by Quick Loan Company such as the SOAP, XML, WSDL and BPEL.

The main idea brought about by applying the standards of web services is to help in keeping Quick Loans able to choose a specific standard service that will meet their needs. One reason to as why Quick Loans Company has chosen BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) is because it is loosely-coupled and thus it will not have issues with interoperability and compatibility. Another idea is that in terms of the added cost in overhead the cost will be low and there will be less time needed to implement such with the high specialized resource which are required for them to go forward.

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) can be defined as notation that is used to specify the process of the business behavior on the basis of the web services. The business processes can be described in just two way namely the businesses process models which are executable and termed as the behavior of the participant in the interaction with the business. The other way is the business protocols which is known for using descriptions that are used for specifying the mutual visible message exchanges behavior of each involved parties in the protocol without necessary having to reveal the internal behavior. The descriptions of the process in this business protocols are referred to as the abstract processes. BPEL has been used as a web service that models between the behavior of both business protocols and executables respectively (Weske, 2012). The scope of BPEL lies within sequencing the process activities in the interactions in the web services, correlation the messages and the instances in processes, recovering the behavior in case of any failures and the conditions which are exceptional and lastly is relationships between process roles with regards to bilateral web services available (Barry, 2017).

Quick Loans Company's Use of BPEL Technology

BPEL is built on the foundations of all the other web services where XML is the major Language. BPEL uses the XML based languages which is known for supporting the technologies in the services provided in the web such as the SOAP, UDDI, WSDL and WS-(Reliable messaging, Addressing, coordination and transaction) among many more. BPEL is used to standardize the business applications like in the case of Quick Loans where it integrates as well as extending the stated integration in to other systems or applications that were isolated or were working in other departments solely (Juric, 2016).

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) engines has been known to have some features that lines up with reference to business orchestration (Mathew, 2009). Business orchestration has been referred to as the act that is used to specify the actions that are as within the process of the business via the services in the web. Business Process Execution Language is mainly applied when modeling the web services in the manner that they can easily interacts with the systems which ate distributed. Business Process Execution Language has allowed for complex orchestrations with multiple applications of services through a controller service which is single (redhat, 2015). Apache ODE is one of the software component that has been designed in the manner that it can execute the BPEL business processes. It is known for sending and receiving messages to and from the services provided by the web. Apache ODE manipulates such data and lastly it performs the handling of errors as prescribed in the definition of the process. The following are some of the BPEL engine features which has been explained on the basis of Apache Orchestration Director Engine (ODE).

1. It is known to offer provisions to Business Process Execution Language components within the available switchyard.
2. There is an enterprise quality GWT that has is basis on the BPM consoles to help in managing the defined processes and instances.
3. Compilation approach to Business Process Execution Language has offered provisions by providing detailed analysis and validations when deployed
4. There is short-lived and long running of the executions of processes.
5. There is persistent in the process and much more recovery tools
6. There is versioning of the processes
7. It always runs in the JBoss clusters.

Integration is a very wide topic. The way a system integrates with other systems really depend the cost effectiveness of the business in terms of cost, time and effort applied. The real business will have to invest in the business in the manner that the cost will be saved, less time will be taken and that there will be effectiveness to the way the business operates (Mericoxa, 2006). The business processes in Quick Loans has shown that there will be need for the management to integrate the existing technologies such as the WSDL which has described the business via the WSDL and the XML which is the data model via the XML (Oracle, 2014). Web services has been created in the manner that they can support almost all the protocols (Wesley, 2015). The processes of BPEL and those of human tasks has been well defined in terms of the interfaces by allowing them to be accessed either externally as the services of the web. In understanding the integration with other components it is the mandate of the users to know the business process choreographer web services interfaces. In this concept the two layers looked upon the implementation without necessary affecting the actual implementation is the HTTP transport layer as well as the JMS layer (Jamal, 2016).

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

Every organization might face the challenges of integrating the diverse information technology systems. In this case the developers first have to solve the communication level issues for integrating so that they can ensure that the system is using different protocols of transport. When integrating the BPEL with other technologies it will be easy as it supports other open standards such as Java/J2EE, JMS among others.  The reasons to why it is possible to solve this integration issues even before the actual implementation is done.

The first reason and issue that may be experienced in the integration is the Service Oriented architecture. SOA has advocated on the general approach by integration of the diverse systems. The developers must create software systems which are distributed and with all the functionalities as provided by the services. SOA services can be easily revoked, have very well-defined interfaces that are used for describing the implementation which may be independent in the manner before it has been developed and lastly is they are self-contained where each task sis very much specific and it can be reused by isolating it from the others. In this concept service interoperability is very paramount where the researchers have proposed various technologies in the layer of middleware in achieving the SOA, the standards of web services will better satisfy all the needs of the universal interoperability. The invoking of the services is done using the SOAP which is done over HTTP and have lived over many interfaces which are described as the web services description language.

The other reason is the Enterprise Service Bus which is technology which is new in the middleware as it offers provisions of SOA features which are required. In the industry it will allow the developers to use ESB in implementing the applications (Curbera, 2013). ESB offers provisions of hosting the environment with the services of the web without considering if whether they are new and hosted or even if the web services front-ends in the existing legal systems. The figure below shows the ESB architecture which consists of the three layers namely:

1. Enterprise infrastructure – this is known for offering further integration, expansion and much more it is already in existence, thus it may need some extension where new technologies can be put in to place.
2. Enterprise Bus Service layer – this layer is known for its inclusion to such adapters used for exposing the existing systems by providing the connectivity in the transport layer.
3. Business Services- the business services are created from the existing information systems.

When integrating between Web service protocols the BPEL-Ready WSDL it is better to create services that are to be used within the BEPL which are much helpful in using the Extensions of BPEL_WSDL extensions. Some of the extensions are such as adding partners and linking definitions especially the one from the peer-to-peer communications and properties definitions and aliases of properties for all the important messages as well as values of correlations. The developers at the third part layer may provide QL’s with gateway that will help in them in being able to use the BPEL. When one want to realize the purpose to as why there is provision of web services interfaces is simplifying the integration and reusing which will in turn help in adding extensions to the existing WSDL (Pasley, 2013).

Challenges of Integration and Solution with BPEL

There are so many advantages with regards to the application of BPEL in any organization that has idea of adopting such technology in their websites as the web service technology. Some of them are as explained here below with the help of the diagram below.

1. BEPL has provided the industry with language which are standards especially when it comes to express the processes of the business. They represent standards which have undergone very vigorous developments by the specific industry towards addressing the complexity of stated requirements which in many cases results to solution of the orchestration which is comprehensive.
2. BPEL has leveraged similar skill sets and much more standard languages. The stated standards has enabled the company to lower the ownership cost through the knowledge of portability and instead of using such complex technologies, BPEL will enable the use of best practices, such patterns and much more the experience and training that is to be leveraged from several vendors by accessing the resources that is knowledgeable in the BPEL tech and stated model.
3. It has abstracted the business logics and the set responsibilities where application and services offered by the businesses are designed in a process agnostic way and can be reused.
4. BPEL is designed in a manner that it can fit in the stack of the web services. BPEL business processes are known for interacting with services via the invocations of the services in the web and themselves ending up being externalized as services of the web. Recursive composition is easily associated with BPEL processes in leveraging with interoperability that are provided by levels which are lower in the stacks of web services such as the SOAP, WS-addressing and the WSDL.
5. BPEL is expressed entirely in the XML. This is because it is termed to be human readable and can be used by any XML facilities used for processing as it enables in producing and consumed within the stack of XML.
6. Last but not least is that BPEL can use and much more extend WSDL as both of them has common features such as providing and consuming services of the web in a way that is abstract and with the use of WSDL such service can be defined. The other major benefits are such as it is very much portable across and over other platforms provided by the vendor purchase and it can interoperate between the processes that are to interact.

The reason for invoking the asynchronous web services is for Quick Loan to be able to coordinate all the conversations in the web service and thus able to ascertain with loan applications which are submitted by the financing institution companies in a simultaneous manner. Lastly is understanding how the joined patterns can be utilized in the manner that the conversations can be cancelled or even in situations where the user want to switch different conversations.

The screenshot below shows the BPEL process in which there is a receive activity for accepting the request from the users. The reply activity will be used to simultaneously sends the feedback or responses back.

The asynchronous web service is the one which is known for sending the request to all the services in the web and ends up waitng for the response. In the screenshot below an asynchronous web service has been created where receive activity will always accepts all the user requests. The activity named assign activity is used for assigning values with reference to the different elements as requested by the users. Next in the invoke activity it will be used in invoking the application by sending the response simultaneously and that makes it to be captured in activity named recentactivity as shown in the figure below. From the diagram one can be able to callback the activities which can be used to finally do the generation of the outputs and thus sending all the responses in an asynchronously manner. If one double-clicks on the receive-output or on the call back clients then one can be able to see each and every one of them as they possess each one variable.

Flow activity is simply the process that contains many sequence activities where each and every sequence is performed in a parallel manner. It may contain other major activities. In the two asynchronous activities callbacks can be executing in parallel and in when applied in this manner one callback will not have to wait for the other one to finish first. In this case each of the above responses will be stored in variables which are very much different globally. In this type of activity the flow in the code of BPEL will simply determine the parallel branches which are parallel. If the required number of branches then it will highly depend on the information available.

There has been challenges which has been introduced because of the emergence of asynchronous messages and services of the web which are used as the building blocks (Teshima, 2010). Programming model such as the synchronous request reply have given way to models which are conventional on the basis of the interactions of asynchronous across all the loosely coupled services in the web.

There are some common requirements that must be met by QUICK LOAN COMPANY in implementation and management of the logic of orchestration for the applications which are service-oriented as they entails requirements such as the set of infrastructure levels which are consistent.

1. The first requirement is the standards which are open such as the JAVA, SOAP, WSDL and XML among others. Many web services standard today have offered unprecedented interoperability’s and the fractions of proprietary cost of platforms of EAI going high. The management of BPEL process is initiated from the ground where is support from the native standards which ensures that interoperability and portability of all applications to be implemented are enabled.
2. Context and the state management. The management of the context and state is done by the BPEL process manager who solves all the problems at the level of infrastructures with seamless support as if dehydrating all the processes said to be long-running and which correlates with the messages held asynchronously.
3. Loosely-coupled services. WEB services and BPEL has enabled the feature of loosely-coupled where patterns has tended to lend themselves in implementing efficient SOA’s.
4. Parallel-Processing. BPEL is one of the most and applied nature process where there is set standard language that has enabled rates which are standards when dating and drawing upon the history which is rich when compared to the languages which preceded.
5. BEPL has been known to have inclusions of supports of requirements that has been allowing the implementations of events which are very complex or even the deterministic flows.
6. Exception Management. It has robustness in support of exception handling and the BPEL process manager may include things such as the design time as well as the capabilities of run-time in management, monitor and administer of the faults and the stated or identified faults.
   

Conclusion

When the business and the people work in achieving a common goal then they will need applications and associated services that works together. This has been the drive in which many industries like Quick Loan Company has applied in moving to Web services and BPEL which has promised benefits which are significant and this is in terms of adapting, how easy it is to integrate and much more the concept of how portable or the interoperable. To make a web service work it will need one to involve to steps that is services published and orchestrating such services. To publish service means to make the web service reliable and available to all the interfaces which are supported by the available platforms and thus will not require all the systems in existence to be wrapped with the new SOAP and XML services of the web layers. On the other hand orchestration is to assemble and coordinate all the services in to a business application that is manageable in the real world especially when competing with the competitors.

In implementation, execution and management of the logic orchestration may complex and thus entailing set of consistent of infrastructures levels of requirements. With the above reason there was need for the BPEL standards and infrastructures of software in supporting the definitions and implementing the process of integration. In conclusion with regards to the case study of Quick Loan company there is need for the software to be built starting from the unknown (ground) all around and up or over the services of the web as well as on the Business Processing Execution Language (BPEL) as they will support the native designs and executing all the Processes of BPEL and if such is applied the goals of an enterprise like Quick Loan such as the portability and independence of the specific vendors will have been achieved.

List of References

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BEATRICE, S. (2013, September 21). Internet and Business. E-Business technologies, 3(2), 12-17. Retrieved October 2, 2018

Curbera, F. (2013). The next step in Web services. Service-oriented computing, 46(10), 29-34. Retrieved october 03, 2018, from https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=944234

Jamal, S. (2016). Application aux services web in the cloud. Environnement de procédé extensible pour l'orchestration, 7(14), 5-9.

Juric, M. (2016, June 12). A Hands-on Introduction to BPEL. Retrieved from Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/matjaz-bpel1-090575.html

Mathew, B. (2009). Business Process Execution Language for Web Services:. Stockholm: Packt publishers.

Mericoxa, A. (2006). Benefits of BPEL Web Service Technology. A framework application that is used to derive the semantic web services, 25-41.

Oracle. (2014, June). The Case concept for a stated BPEL Server. Orchestrating the concept of the existing Web Services:, 1(1), 8-14.

Owatta, U. o. (2018, June 23). Electronic Business TEchnologies, MEBT. Retrieved from Mastersportal: https://www.mastersportal.com/studies/168344/electronic-business-technologies.html

Pasley, J. (2013, July 29). IEEE internet Computing. How BPEL and SOA are changing Web services development, 4-9. Retrieved October 03, 2018, from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1438306/authors#authors

redhat, a. (2015, December 12). Features of BPEL Engine. Retrieved from Redhat: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_jboss_fuse/6.3/html/bpel_development_guide/features_of_bpel_engine

Teshima, N. (2010). IEEE XPLore Digital Library. Orchestration made simple in the framework applications in controlling the integrated codes, 78-91.

Weske, M. (2012). Business Process Management. In M. Weske, Business Process Management Architectures (pp. 12-23). PotsdamGerman: Universität Potsdam.

Wesley, A. (2015). Understanding SOA. Introduction to SOA with Web Services , 7-13.