When discussing SOA, we need to understand its true value to the organization. Whether the service is basic or composite, its relevance is in its capability to support the business processes of the organization, and in turn help the organization to achieve its objectives. If we take a top-down view, our business processes are the main motivation behind creating a robust SOA infrastructure. SOA's main motivation is to provide a backbone for an organization's business processes.

This chapter discusses the concept of orchestrating business processes from SOA's perspective. We will introduce some core BPM concepts and collaborative technologies that add value in any BPM lead SOA initiatives.

To demonstrate the concept, we will use the Oracle BPEL Process Manager to execute and monitor the processes for a sample application, concentrating on the orchestration of an end‑to-end process. We will also look at how Business Rules Management and BAM technologies...