Architecture of PEGA

Architecture of PEGA ……. Part 1

Before we get started with PEGA Architecture let's first understand a bit around BPM. This article mainly focuses of key components of BPM rather than PEGA. It is important to understand BPM before understanding Architecture of PEGA. If are already familiar with these skip to next article which focuses more on PEGA architecture.


As you all know BPM stands for Business Process Management. The immediate question that comes to mind is what a Business Process is?

Wikipedia defines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process  as follows, which is quite easy to understand


A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or customers. It often can be visualized with a flowchart as a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or with a Process Matrix as a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on the data in the process.
Let’s see easier definition of BPM

BPM is the general term for the services and tools that support explicit process management (such as process analysis, definition, execution, monitoring and administration), including support for human and application-level interaction.


In other words a BPM can be treated as a set combination of


BPM = P2P + A2A + P2A


(P2P – Person to Person, A2A – Application to Application, P2A – Person to Application).


When we define a BPM the set of component that completes the BPM architecture. Although most of the components are self explanatory below listed with few one liner description


• Workflow: A workflow is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a person, work of a simple or complex mechanism, work of a group of persons, work of an organization of staff, or machines.


• Portal: Portal is a web system that provides the functions and features to authenticate and identify the users and provide them with an easy, intuitive, personalized and user-customizable web-interface for facilitating access to information and services that are of primary relevance and interests to the users.

• Operational Data Analysis : Operational business intelligence (BI) is a system of reports, metrics, and dashboards designed to drive decisions that optimize a company’s performance in the present.


• Integration: In the BPM context – Integration means linking all the various layers of BPMS architecture seamlessly as well as with other systems that form part of Business process domain .


• Document Management: In information systems, Document management consists of Digitizing, Indexing, Archiving , Retrieving and Managing documents.


• Identity Management: In information systems, identity management is the management of the identity life cycle of entities (subjects or objects)


• Rules: A business rules engine (BRE) is a software component that allows non-programmers to add or change business logic in a business process management (BPM) system. More @ http://dotnetclr.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-journey-to-pega-starts-from-here.html

• Process Repository: In the BPM context – Process Repository is the collection of Process models – Design time, completed and run time . Typically they are stored as XML models compliant to standards like BPMN.


• Process services :
• Monitoring (Business Activity Monitoring BAM ) :
• Lifecycle Management :
• Security :
• Event Management :
• Process Documentation :


Next in Part -2 we are going to see what all are PEGA offerings (PEGA offers smartBPM) and how each of the aforementioned components aligns with PEGA smartBPM.

Where can I get the Personal edition of PEGA Or PRPC Personal Edition 6.2 SP1 (32-bit and 64-bit versions)

The PEGA personal edition is meant for only PEGA clients and partners only. The Personal Edition is individually licensed. Each download is tagged to a single named individual, and requires registration and authorization from Pegasystem’s  Sales or Partner Support organization. You must register with your corporate email account using the form @ http://www.pega.com/Products/Quicktour/default.asp . 

Please note that your request will not be accepted if you are using the personal email id.

Once your request is approved you will receive an confirmation with the details to download the software.

What is PEGA? What is PEGA PRPC or What is PRPC?

My journey to PEGA starts from here starting from the very basic questions.

Q. What is PEGA?

Pega is the software for customer centricity. Many of the world’s leading organizations use Pega to drive revenue growth, improve customer experience, and enhance operational efficiency. Pega’s unified offering is recognized by industry analysts as a leader in CRM, BPM, case management and business rules. Pega’s software complements existing systems and offers a wide range of industry applications designed to accelerate time to market. 

Q. What is PEGA PRPC or What is PRPC?

PRPC (PegaRULES Process Commander) is a software product created, licensed, and marketed by Pegasystems Inc (PEGA). PRPC is the core component of Pegasystems's "SmartBPM" suit of BPM (Business Process Management) solutions.

PegaRULES Process Commander comes essentially as two discreet entities,

• PegaRULES : Core Java-based/Object-Oriented Rules Engine.
• Process Commander : Layers of pre-configured rules that provide a solid foundation on which to perform development and customization.

Incorporating both of the following components, PRPC addresses simple to complex business challenges:

• BPM
• Procedural processing through a user-interactive BPM / BPMS(BPM Suite) tool.
• BRE
• Declarative "On-Change" processing through an event-driven tool.

The advantages that PRPC offers from a Business perspective are as follows:

• Software platform enabling businesses the opportunity to migrate all their disparate, diverse, and often complex business rules onto one platform.
• Ability to streamline, automate, and document business processes.
• Consolidate multi-stream processes into one system.
• Through service connectors (such as SOAP, MQ, active file listening) connect to existing enterprise applications.
• Pass data between systems and have such information parsed, extracted, and interpreted.

The advantages that PRPC offers from a Developer perspective are as follows:

• Development can be achieved in small iterative-based parts
• Development is contained within heavily graphic-driven 'Rule Forms' that are version and ruleset controlled.
• All run-time Java code is compiled and executed by the system at run-time.
• Changes or new configurations can be tested in real-time, even on production systems without affecting other users or processes.

Ultimately PRPC is a software platform that allows businesses the opportunity to migrate all their disparate, diverse and often complex business rules, practices and processes into one platform. The platform offers the possibility of streamlining, automating and documenting business processes in a way that can truly allow consolidation of multi-stream processing into one system. Through PRPC's myriad service connection capabilities (such as SOAP, MQ, active file listening on directories etc...), it is possible to connect already existing enterprise applications to PRPC and pass to the platform messages, data or information and have such information parsed, extracted and interpreted for use either within user driven processes, or even system-driven events.

So, what does that really mean?

Think of PRPC as a box of sophisticated Lego. You are provided with a number of building blocks that enable you to quickly and easily build an application to suite the requirements of your business. The Lego blocks (or Rules as Pegasystems calls them) represent different parts of your application. There are rules for screens, decisions, correspondence, interfacing to external systems, etc. You can take these rules and put them together to design and build your solution.

This also means that it is very simple and easy to change your solution to suit the ever changing requirements of the business - you simply change the lego bricks around!!

Q. What is Rule Engine or What is BRE (Business Rule Engine)?

A business rules engine (BRE) is a software component that allows non-programmers to add or change business logic in a business process management (BPM) system. A business rule is a statement that describes a business policy or procedure. Business logic describes the sequence of operations that is associated with data in a database to carry out the rule.

A business rules engine works by separating execution code for business rules from the rest of the business process management system. This allows the end user to change business rules without having to ask a programmer BPM development

for help. When a change is made, the engine will evaluate the change's effect on other rules in the system and flag the user if there is a conflict.

According to authors Alex Berson and Larry Dubov, a complete business rules engine will include the following:

·        Business Rule Repository - A database for storing the business rules as defined by the business users.

·      Business Rule Editor - An intuitive user interface that allows business users to define, design, document and edit business rules.

·        Reporting Component - An intuitive user interface that allows business users to query and report existing rules.

·        Rules Engine Execution Core - The actual programming code that enforces the rules.