BPEL stands for Business Process and Execution Language. It is a standard from the Oasis group for defining Web Services Orchestration. That is, it is an XML process flow language for calling and defining Web Services. Some of the language constructs are: while loop, invoke, request, response, sequence, etc. A coder will build a BPEL flow and deploy it in a server like BPWS4J or WebSphere Application Server (WAS). BPEL combines and replaces IBM's Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) and Microsoft's XLANG specification. (BPEL is also sometimes identified as BPELWS or BPEL4WS.)
BPEL Tools
The IBM WebSphere Business Integration Modeler
- Eclipse plug-in
- graphical tool
- Supposed to export to WSDL and BPEL, but the export wizard failed to start for me
- Can import XSD but not WSDL (for referencing existing web services)
- I think the idea of this product is to export to BPEL and import into the IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition (WSAD - IE)
- Deployment in WAS
IBM BPEL4WS editor or BPWS4J editor
- plug-in for eclipse
- table drive (not drag and drop)
- very basic, you have to fill in much of the information
- Saves to BPEL (this does actually work)
- Provides error messages, but doesn't help you fix them
- Double click properties doesn't work
- Deployment in BPWS4J runtime
I think both of these are free downloads
Microsoft Visual Studio Orchestration Designer
- BPEL compliant
- Deployment to Biztalk
BPEL and enterprise software
Currently proprietary work flow products do not all provide BPEL compatibility. Neither do all the Web Services as a standard interface for the legacy application. As Web Services are added, it might make sense for the work flow to support BPEL and export flows to BPEL for customers to use as a midlevel solution. High end solutions might be IBM's Business Modeler.
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