Common Elements Used in PeopleSoft Business Process Weaver

The following table describes elements and terminology that are commonly used in PeopleSoft BPW:

Term	Definition
Business Process	Business Process is the highest level component that defines the flow of a task’s execution. It is made up of Process Steps. Each process step executes one task.
Process Steps	Process Steps are the sub-components of Business Process. Business Process is a collection of Process Steps, with optional dependencies defined between them.
Task	A Task is a program or the business logic to be executed as part of the Business Process. A Task is defined in the Task Registry page. The most common tasks are Process Scheduler processes (Jobs). A Task is associated with a Process Step. One Step points to one Task, but the same Task can be associated with multiple Steps within a Business Process.
Batch Programs	In BPW, Batch Programs are processes (or Jobs) that are defined in Process Scheduler.
Run Control	Run Control, as is the case in all PeopleSoft documentation, identifies the parameters or input data to the processes. At the Step Thread level, it is the same as the Process Scheduler Run Control. The Run Control can be associated with the Business Process, Process Thread, Step, or Step Thread.
Process Thread	When setting up a Business Process Run Control, multiple Process Threads can be created with different run controls. Thus, different sets of input parameters and data can execute concurrent flows of the business process in parallel.
Step Thread	At the Process Step level, (for example, when running an Application Engine program), the input parameters and data can be partitioned to create multiple Step Threads to run multiple copies of the Application Engine programs (with different run controls) concurrently. The step is not considered finished until all its step threads are finished.
Process Instance	When a process (program) is executed, an instance is created to track the execution. Similar to Run Control, several levels of tracking are associated with business process, process thread, step, and step thread. This documentation refers to them as Business Process Instance, Thread Instance, Step Instance, and Step Thread Instance. Since step thread is the level at which processing is scheduled for the Process Scheduler, Step Thread Instance corresponds to the Process Instance in Process Scheduler.