Chapter 6. Fault Handling and Signaling

So far we have learned how to perform data manipulations, loops, and external service invocations synchronously and asynchronously. Imagine what will happen when the BPEL process invokes an external web service which is not available at the moment. In such a situation, the BPEL process could lead to an erroneous state. How can the BPEL process manage those generated faults and avoid such unexpected states?

WS-BPEL 2.0 provides fault handlers that come to the rescue. It tells the BPEL process how to perform when such an error occurs. In this chapter, we will learn about fault handling capabilities in a WS-BPEL 2.0 process.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Introducing faults and fault handlers
• Adding fault handlers to business processes
• Understanding the fault handlers
• Different fault signaling techniques
• Ending and terminating a BPEL process due to a fault