Extension Functions and Activities

In Chapters 3 and 4 we saw that BPEL is very flexible with respect to the expression and query language used. By default XPath 1.0 is used; however, any other language supported by the BPEL server can also be used. The idea behind this flexibility is to open up BPEL for future versions of XPath and XQuery.

XPath 1.0 does not provide all functions necessary to develop BPEL processes. Therefore, the BPEL specification defines additional functions such as getVariableData(), getVariableProperty(), and getLinkStatus(). Oracle BPEL Process Manager provides additional extension functions and activities to simplify development.

Note

Using functions and activities described in this section limits the portability of BPEL processes, because these will not be available on other BPEL servers.

Oracle BPEL Process Manager provides the following extension functions and activities:

• Oracle-specific BPEL activities: These include activities for data/array manipulation, Java...