BPM is rife with three-letter acronyms (or TLAs). The following list decodes some of the most important terms.
Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable; the properties of a transaction
Asynchronous Web Services Protocol
Business-to-Business
Business Activity Monitoring
Business Enterprise Integration Domain Task Force
Business Process Diagram
Business Process Definition Metamodel
Business Process Execution Language for Web Services; from the OASIS group
BPEL for Java
Business Process Modeling, sometimes called Business Process Management
Business Process Modeling Language
Business Process Modeling Notation; another specification from BPMI
Business Process Modeling Initiative; an organization, not a specification
Business Process Runtime Interface
Business Process Query Language
Business Process Semantic Model
Business Process Specification System
Business Process Extension Layers
Business Rules Management
Business Semantics of Business Rules
Common Object Request Broker Architecture
Common Warehouse Metamodel
Common workflow audit data
Enterprise Application Integration
Electronic business XML
Enterprise Distributed Object Computing
Enterprise JavaBeans
Entity-relationship
Enterprise Service Bus
Emerging Technologies Toolkit; from IBM
Java 2 Enterprise Edition
Java Workflow editor; from Enhydra
Java Connector Architecture
Java Database Connectivity
Java Messaging Service
Java Management Extensions
Java Server Pages
Long-running transaction
Model-Driven Architecture
Meta-Object Facility
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
Object Management Group
Object-Oriented
Object-Relational
Organization Structure Metamodel
Plain Old Java Objects
Process Definition for Java
Public Key Infrastructure
Production Rule Representation
Requests for Proposals
Service-oriented Architecture
Simple Object Access Protocol
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration
Unified Modeling Language
Universally unique identifier
Workflow API
Workflow Management Coalition
Workflow XML
Web Services Business Process Execution Language
Web Services Choreography Interface
Web Services Conversation Language
Web Services Choreography Description Language
Web Services Definition Language
IBM's Web Services Flow Language
World Wide Web Consortium
XML Language
XML Metadata Interchange
XML Process Definition Language