Notification Service

Business processes sometimes require that notifications are sent to the users or participants. For example, our TravelApproval process might want to notify the employee by e-mail about which flight ticket has been selected. Another use case is when an exception occurs in a business process. Then we can use notifications by e-mail or by other channels to notify the responsible person and require intervention.

BPEL specification does not provide a mechanism for sending e-mails or other notifications. Therefore, we would need to create a web service (partner link) which is capable of sending and/or receiving notifications. This web service would provide port types with operations for sending and receiving notifications and we would use<invoke> and<receive> activities to invoke them the same as for any other service.

Fortunately, Oracle SOA Suite 11g already provides such a service it is called Notification Service. Notification Service uses the underlying...