With Business Process Manager, you can describe the data involved, resources required, role-responsibilities granted, and other characteristics that define a business task. What makes the Business Process Manager actually useful is that it participates in the execution of the tasks so defined -- for example, it will see to it that information is routed to the appropriate recipient.

Components include Information Integrator, Legacy Integrator, Business Process Manager, Service Orchestrator, and Orchestrator Studio. For my review, I focused on the parts of crossvision that a creator of new services will interact with the most: CentraSite 2.1, Service Orchestrator 3.1, and Service Orchestrator Studio 3.1.1.0.

CentraSite and Orchestrator

CentraSite and Service Orchestrator are the two essential chambers of crossvision's heart. All roads lead to CentraSite, which serves as the management and control center for SOA efforts. Orchestrator is the runtime engine of crossvision services, and Orchestrator Studio is the IDE that allows you to create, debug, and deploy those services.

A combination registry and repository with a bit of application server thrown in, CentraSite acts as both broker -managing a directory of available services -and a kind of database for those services. In addition, when you create a project, CentraSite manages storage of all the resources that comprise your service. (Fujitsu and Software AG jointly developed CentraSite.)