The process engine, the designers' artifacts (BPDs, service flows, coach views, business objects) and the REST APIs are the same code base, so process apps import unchanged. Everything around the engine is different:
| Area | Traditional BAW | Workflow on CP4BA |
|---|
| Runtime | WebSphere ND cell, clusters, node agents, deployment manager | WebSphere Liberty in pods on OpenShift, managed by the CP4BA operator from a custom resource (CR) |
| Authoring | Process Center + web / desktop Process Designer | Workflow Center (authoring pod) inside Business Automation Studio; web designer only |
| Runtime environments | Process Server cells (test / prod), online or offline | Workflow Server deployments, one CR section per environment (usually separate namespaces) |
| End-user UI | Process Portal (classic), Workplace optional | Workplace (federated across Workflow, Case, Automation Workstreams); classic Process Portal not the entry point |
| Authentication | WebSphere security: LDAP, SPNEGO / SAML TAI, basic auth for REST | IAM / Zen: LDAP or OIDC / SAML IdP, Zen API keys and bearer tokens for REST, users onboarded to Zen roles |
| Configuration | 100Custom.xml, admin console, BPMConfig | CR fields, ConfigMaps / Secrets (100Custom.xml through a secret), operator reconciles; no admin console |
| Unsupported | - | Heritage human services and heritage coaches, BAW Advanced (BPEL / IID / adapters), desktop Process Designer, Business Space, some WebSphere-specific Java APIs |
| Operations | Logs on the file system, PMI, wsadmin | oc logs, OpenShift logging / monitoring stack, Operations REST API, BAI for analytics |
| Upgrades | Fix packs with Installation Manager, in-place | Operator channel / image updates, rolling pod replacement; database schema upgrades run by the operator |
| Licensing | PVU / VPC per server | vCPU measured by the License Service across the Cloud Pak |
Practical consequences: (1) review every heritage artifact and BPEL dependency before the move; (2) integrations that used file shares, WebSphere mail sessions or JNDI resources must be reconfigured through the CR (persistent volumes, custom Liberty config) or replaced by REST / Kafka; (3) external clients change from basic auth to Zen API keys / tokens plus the CSRF token; (4) administrators learn oc, YAML and the operator's status conditions instead of the WebSphere console.
# what runs where: the CR is the single source of truth
oc get icp4acluster -n cp4ba -o yaml | less # spec.workflow_authoring_configuration / spec.baw_configuration
oc get pods -n cp4ba | grep -i -E "baw|workflow|pfs|workplace"
oc get icp4acluster icp4adeploy -n cp4ba -o jsonpath='{.status.endpoints}' | jq . # every UI and API URLReferences