Dynamic partner links

So far we have discussed BPEL processes where all partner links have been defined at the design time and related to actual web services. We have used a single partner link for each web service we have communicated with.

In an advanced BPEL process, we might want to define the partner link endpoint references at runtime. This means that the BPEL process will dynamically determine which actual web service it will use for a certain invocation, based on the variable content. This is particularly useful in scenarios where the BPEL process communicates with several web services that have the same WSDL interface. This has been the case for our travel process example where American and Delta Airlines' web services shared the same interface.

To understand how we can define partner link endpoint references dynamically at run time, let us look at how endpoint references are represented in BPEL. BPEL uses endpoint references as defined by the WS-Addressing. For each BPEL process...