BPEL Business Process Example

To demonstrate how business processes are described with BPEL, we will define a simple business process for business travels. Let us consider the business travel process. We describe an oversimplified scenario, where the client invokes the business process, specifying the name of the employee, the destination, the departure date, and the return date. The BPEL business process first checks the employee travel status. We will suppose that a web service exists through which such a check can be made. Then the BPEL process will check the price for the flight ticket with two airlines: American Airlines and Delta Airlines. Again we will suppose that both airline companies provide a web service through which such check can be made. Finally, the BPEL process will select the lower price and return the travel plan to the client.

For the purposes of this example we first build a synchronous BPEL process, to maintain simplicity. This means that the client will wait for the...