Developing business processes with BPEL

BPEL uses an XML-based vocabulary that allows us to specify and describe business processes. BPEL is a programming language. Most development environments that support BPEL, such as Oracle JDeveloper, IBM WebSphere Integration Developer, or Eclipse usually provide a visual editor, where we can compose BPEL processes by dragging and dropping the BPEL activities in a visual way. However, the majority of tools also allow a switch to the source view, where you can enter the BPEL code directly. A BPEL visual representation is generated out of BPEL code. In this chapter we will look at the BPEL code.

With BPEL, you can describe business processes in two distinct ways:

• Executable business processes: They specify the exact details of business processes and can be executed by a BPEL process server. In the majority of cases, we will use BPEL to specify executable processes.

• Abstract business processes: They process templates or public message exchange between...