Book Image

Business Process Execution Language for Web Services

Book Image

Business Process Execution Language for Web Services

Overview of this book

Web services provide the basic technical platform required for application interoperability. They do not, however, provide higher level control, such as which web services need to be invoked, which operations should be called and in what sequence. Nor do they provide ways to describe the semantics of interfaces, the workflows, or e-business processes. BPEL is the missing link to assemble and integrate web services into a real business process BPEL4WS standardizes process automation between web services. This applies both within the enterprise, where BPEL4WS is used to integrate previously isolated systems, and between enterprises, where BPEL4WS enables easier and more effective integration with business partners. In providing a standard descriptive structure BPEL4WS enables enterprises to define their business processes during the design phase. Wider business benefits can flow from this through business process optimization, reengineering, and the selection of most appropriate processes . Supported by major vendorsó including BEA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, SAP, Sun, and othersó BPEL4WS is becoming the accepted standard for business process management. This book provides detailed coverage of BPEL4WS, its syntax, and where, and how, it is used. It begins with an overview of web services, showing both the foundation of, and need for, BPEL. The web services orchestration stack is explained, including standards such as WS-Security, WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction, WS-Addressing, and others. The BPEL language itself is explained in detail, with Code snippets and complete examples illustrating both its syntax and typical construction. Having covered BPEL itself, the book then goes on to show BPEL is used in context. by providing an overview of major BPEL4WS servers. It covers the Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 in detail, and shows how to write BPEL4WS solutions using these servers.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Summary


BizTalk Server 2004 is a major improvement over its predecessor, and with the support for BPEL, you can expect a lot of interactions and porting of business processes between BizTalk and other products that understand BPEL. In this chapter we studied the architecture of BizTalk Server 2004 and how messages are processed. We briefly touched upon XLANG/s, Microsoft’s proprietary language for defining business processes. We then delved into the details of BPEL support offered by BizTalk Server 2004 and saw how most of the Orchestration constructs directly correspond to the BPEL constructs. We also saw how to build an Orchestration and export it to BPEL, as well as how to import BPEL processes into BizTalk. We also learned about things we need to take care of and things we need to avoid in order to successfully export or import a business process. We concluded the chapter by discussing Microsoft’s roadmap for the future of BizTalk.