App Server

WebSphere Process Server (WPS)

WPS is an IBM product that serves as the runtime engine for artifacts produced in a business-driven development process. In short, it is server software that allows you to run IBM's Business Process Management (BPM), Service Component Architecture (SCA), and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) functionality on a server, just as WebSphere Application Server allows you to run Web Application Server functionality. WebSphere Process Server is mounted on top of WebSphere Application Server and extends the WebSphere ESB.

“WPS is a high-performance business engine to help form processes to meet business goals. It allows the deployment of standards-based business integration applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which takes everyday business applications and breaks them down into individual business functions and processes, rendering them as services.”

Process Server is designed to provide and integrate BPM, SCA, and ESB functionality. It is primarily marketed toward Business Process Management solutions, though it was previously marketed as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) solution.

Special Usage

Our current app did not use the BPM features at all. Instead, it was used as a glorified ESB, tying together all of our services and data sources to implement a SOA solution. While this is how the tool was originally marketed, this direction was all but abandoned by IBM, so it is difficult to find non-IBM references in our way. Most references to Process Server found on the internet are tied closely to BPM.