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Business Process Execution Language for Web Services 2nd Edition
Business Process Execution Language for Web Services 2nd Edition

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Business Process Execution Language for Web Services 2nd Edition

Chapter 2. Web Services Technology Stack

Chapter 1 introduced you to SOA and BPEL—a language for composing web services. The composition of web services requires several new considerations in the protocol stack. Such collaborations require exchange of security tokens, transaction contexts, reliable delivery of messages, etc. Thus, the existing web services protocol stack must be modified to account for the additional information that must be carried as a part of the message.

In this chapter, we will study the modified protocol stack and the various new components added to the stack. Several new standards have been created for accommodating these components in the new stack. These are WS-Security, WS-Coordination, WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-BusinessActivity, WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Addressing, WS-Eventing, etc.

E-Business Collaborations


The development of web services technology and its use for integrating widely spread legacy applications for a multi-location company was not sufficient. Something more was needed: the integration (composition) of web services deployed by different companies. A typical business transaction requires the use of diverse web services. Let us take an example of a travel booking. When you use a website for booking your flights, you are using the service provided by the website and also the service provided by the airline. You may even request the lowest quote from different airlines during this transaction. So, you will be using the services offered by several companies in a single business transaction. This kind of composition of web services introduces many more considerations. The participating web services (partners) must collaborate with other participants and a coordinator to perform the desired business operation. The operation may be to achieve a simple buyer...

WS-Security


In the distributed web-services model, messages are exchanged between collaborating parties. During this message exchange, end-to-end message security must be addressed. As we have seen in earlier examples of typical business processes, a message may hop between many participating service providers. XML provides a platform-independent and network-neutral format for data transport. However, such messages must be secured. There may be a need to encrypt sensitive data. Also, once a service requester sends a message for a service to a service provider, the service provider may ask for the sender’s identity. The request message should be able to transport the user credentials securely to the provider. Overall, message transport in a business process has many more requirements than are typically required for point-to-point messaging, where a single transport and a single protocol is used for communication.

Message security primarily involves the following:

  • Message integrity

  • Message confidentiality...

Typical Business Transaction Scenario


When you make a business trip, you typically require an airline booking, a hotel booking, and a car rental booking. Generally, all three bookings must be done before you confirm your trip. If any of these bookings is not available, you may have to re-schedule your business trip. This kind of business transaction involves confirmations from more than one participant.

Each participant is an independent business entity and will not like an outer business process, such as the one initiated by your travel agent, to get hold of the company’s resources. An initiating process (your travel agent) makes a request to each of the involved parties and obtains a commitment from them.

For example, you may request a direct flight to the destination on the specified day, the hotel booking for a couple of nights starting on the arrival day, as well as a car rental for the number of days of your trip. The travel agent makes a request to each of the concerned parties and...

WS-Coordination


In a typical business scenario, web services may be required to share information, such as security context, transaction context, and so on while participating in a composite business process. The WS-Coordination specification defines a framework for this purpose. This is an extensible framework and allows existing applications to hide their proprietary protocols while coordinating with other applications in a heterogeneous environment. It is used in conjunction with other specifications and does not provide a complete solution on its own. WS-Coordination is used whenever coordination between applications developed using different vendor specifications is desired. Such applications obviously run under different trust domains and so appropriate access control must be implemented.

The Framework

The framework defines a coordinator and a set of coordination protocols. The coordinator consists of the following three components:

  • Activation service

  • Registration service

  • Set of coordination...

Web Services Transaction Specifications


The Web Services Transaction specifications define the coordination types discussed in the previous section. These specifications are used along with WS-Coordination and WS-Security to implement distributed transactions across a set of diverse web services.

The Web Services Transaction Specifications define two specifications:

  • Atomic transaction (AT)

  • Business activity (BA)

An atomic transaction is a typical single-domain transaction that requires the ACID properties to be satisfied. This is typically used for activities of short duration and is applicable within a limited trust domain.

A business activity is used for activities having long duration. In this case, due to the long duration, the changes made by each participant are not hidden from others for an unduly long time and so are immediate and permanent. Exceptions are handled by the business logic and compensating transactions are used to guarantee consistency.

Both AT and BA allow coordination...

OASIS BTP


As mentioned earlier, a typical business activity spans several independent organizations. Implementing a transaction that requires ACID properties to be satisfied may not be possible in such cases, as a single transaction could last for hours or even days together. It may not be possible to hold locks on the participants’ resources for such a long duration. OASIS has defined a protocol called BTP (Business Transaction Protocol) that allows the coordination of business transactions spanning multiple participants. The transaction ensures consistency irrespective of the disparate applications running on different technologies deployed at different organizations. As it is not possible for a single controller to hold the resources belonging to different organizations, each participating organization is responsible for making a commitment required by a business transaction. The requester assumes that the party who has committed a portion of a business process will honor its commitment...

Reliable Messaging


A typical business process is composed of several diverse web services. These services are provided by several coordinating partners. During the execution of the business process, several documents are exchanged between the partners. The means of exchange used for these documents must be reliable. This section discusses the standards for achieving reliable messaging between the partners.

In any communication, delivering a message reliably is of utmost importance to ensure the proper integrity of the system. Delivery of messages is subject to several error conditions arising due to:

  • Network failures

  • Component failures

  • System failures

Under such unforeseen conditions, messages should still be reliably delivered. XML-based messages are usually exchanged between partners over HTTP. HTTP is a stateless protocol and is not reliable. While using HTTP, a message in split into several small packets during delivery. Such packets are numbered. The order in which these packets are received...

WS-Addressing


Every web service has an endpoint to which service messages are targeted. WSDL allows you to define endpoints for the messages using port types, bindings, service elements, and so on. However, the WSDL 1.1 model lacks flexibility. (For detailed information on WSDL refer http://www.cos.ufrj.br/~baiao/papers/cavalcantim_workflow.pdf.)

To achieve flexibility, a new specification for defining endpoints has been proposed. This is known as WS-Addressing. This specification facilitates the following:

  • Endpoint descriptions may be dynamically generated and customized.

  • During stateful interactions, new service instances may be created. The new specifications help in identifying these.

  • Endpoint information may be shared between communicating parties in tightly coupled environments.

The specification defines new XML elements to address service endpoints. The following XML document illustrates the use of these new elements.

<S:Envelope xmlns:S=”http://www.w3.org/2002/12/soap-envelope”
  xmlns...

WS-Inspection


A web service provider publishes a service description for consumers. This is typically published as a WSDL document. The service provider registers a reference to the service description in a centralized registry, typically UDDI. The consumer locates a reference to the service description by looking up the registry and requests the service description from the service provider. The description document is usually emailed to the consumer, limiting the dynamic discovery and use of the service.

The WS-Inspection specification allows for dynamic discovery of service documents. WS-Inspection is XML-based and provides an aggregation of references to service descriptions. A WS-Inspection document does not describe a service—it just helps in locating a desired description document. Generally, a WS-Inspection document is made available at the point of contact of the service. The consumer parses this document to retrieve the references to the service descriptions and selects a desired...

WS-Policy


Web services are composed to create an aggregate web service. A participating web service may need to communicate its policies to other participants. For example, one of the participants (a partner) may require a Kerberos security token for its access. This will be defined as a policy assertion in its policy document. Such policy documents must be shared between partners who wish to access the services provided by this partner site. A policy may consist of multiple assertions. The service provider may require all such assertions be satisfied by the requesting partner, or it may request the partner to satisfy at least one of the assertions. WS-Policy was designed for creating policy documents.

WS-Policy defines a set of constructs for specifying web service policies that can be communicated to others. The specification does not define how to transport or discover a policy. Policies may be associated with various entities and resources. The policy may be associated with arbitrary...

WS-Eventing


In a business process, a participating web service may be interested in receiving notifications whenever a certain type of event occurs in relation with other participating web services. A web service that is interested in such a notification should register its interest (subscribe) with other web services (event sources) where such events may be generated. The subscriber is called an event sink. The WS-Eventing specification allows you to create and delete event subscriptions. An expiration time may be set for each subscription. A subscriber may renew or unsubscribe its subscription with the event source.

All these requests are performed by sending an appropriate message to the event source. The WS-Eventing specification defines the message format for achieving this. Like the other specifications we discussed, this specification also relies on other service specifications for secure, reliable, and transacted message delivery.

Event Subscription

An event sink subscribes to an...

Conclusion


Web services expose interfaces of existing components using a standard web-based protocol. A client uses these interfaces to use the services provided by the components. A typical business process requires multiple web services. The involvement of web services from different developers required the creation of new standards to achieve proper coordination between them. Several new standards were developed to achieve this coordination. This chapter has discussed several such open standards that are required for the coordination of web services.

The WS-Security specification addresses how to transport security context between the participating processes and thus how to provide a secured distributed computing based on the collaboration of diverse web services. The WS-Coordination specification defines a framework that is used by participating processes to coordinate the desired activities between multiple processes.

Web Services Transactions require the coordination between multiple...

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Key benefits

  • Architecture, syntax, development and composition of Business Processes and Services using BPEL
  • Advanced BPEL features such as compensation, concurrency, links, scopes, events, dynamic partner links, and correlations
  • Oracle BPEL Process Manager and BPEL Designer Microsoft BizTalk Server as a BPEL server

Description

Web services provide the basic technical platform required for application interoperability. They do not, however, provide higher level control, such as which web services need to be invoked, which operations should be called and in what sequence. Nor do they provide ways to describe the semantics of interfaces, the workflows, or e-business processes. BPEL is the missing link to assemble and integrate web services into a real business process BPEL4WS standardizes process automation between web services. This applies both within the enterprise, where BPEL4WS is used to integrate previously isolated systems, and between enterprises, where BPEL4WS enables easier and more effective integration with business partners. In providing a standard descriptive structure BPEL4WS enables enterprises to define their business processes during the design phase. Wider business benefits can flow from this through business process optimization, reengineering, and the selection of most appropriate processes . Supported by major vendorsó including BEA, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, SAP, Sun, and othersó BPEL4WS is becoming the accepted standard for business process management. This book provides detailed coverage of BPEL4WS, its syntax, and where, and how, it is used. It begins with an overview of web services, showing both the foundation of, and need for, BPEL. The web services orchestration stack is explained, including standards such as WS-Security, WS-Coordination, WS-Transaction, WS-Addressing, and others. The BPEL language itself is explained in detail, with Code snippets and complete examples illustrating both its syntax and typical construction. Having covered BPEL itself, the book then goes on to show BPEL is used in context. by providing an overview of major BPEL4WS servers. It covers the Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 in detail, and shows how to write BPEL4WS solutions using these servers.

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at architects and developers in the design, implementation, and integration phases of advanced information systems and e-business solutions, developing business processes and dealing with the issues of composition, orchestration, transactions, coordination, and security. The book presumes knowledge of XML and web services, web services development (either on J2EE or .NET), and multi-tier architecture

What you will learn

  • Chapter 1 provides a detailed introduction to BPEL and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). It discusses business processes and their automation, explains the role of BPEL, web services, and Enterprise Service Buses (ESB) in SOA, provides insight into business process composition with BPEL, explains the most important features, compares BPEL to other specifications, provides an overview of BPEL servers, and discusses the future of BPEL.
  • Chapter 2 provides a detailed introduction to the Web Services Technology Stack. It discusses the important standards and specifications for using BPEL and implementing SOA with web services, such as WS-Security, WS-Addressing, WS-Coordination, WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-BusinessActivity, WS-Reliable Messaging, etc.
  • Chapter 3 discusses the composition of web services with BPEL. The chapter introduces the core concepts of BPEL and explains how to define synchronous and asynchronous business processes with BPEL. The reader gets familiar with BPEL process structure, partner links, sequential and parallel service invocation, variables, conditions, etc.
  • Chapter 4 goes deeper into the BPEL specification and covers advanced features for modeling complex business processes. Advanced activities, scopes, serialization, fault handing, compensations, event handling, correlation sets, concurrent activities and links, process lifecycle, and dynamic partner links are covered in detail.
  • Chapter 5 explains how to use the Oracle BPEL Process Manager for deploying and executing business processes defined in BPEL. It describes the server architecture, tools, features, and common approaches for managing and debugging BPEL processes. The chapter also looks at graphical development of BPEL processes using Oracle BPEL Designer for JDeveloper and for Eclipse.
  • Chapter 6 takes a detailed look at the advanced features of the Oracle BPEL Process Manager including extension functions, dynamic parallel flows, Web Services Invocation Framework, Java embedding, Notification service, Workflow service, Identity service, and Oracle BPEL Server APIs.
  • Chapter 7 discusses MS BizTalk Server 2004 and its support for BPEL. It explains how to develop business processes in BizTalk and export them to BPEL. It also explains how to import BPEL processes into BizTalk and how to use the Orchestration Designer tool to define processes graphically, and compares BizTalk and BPEL constructs.
  • Appendix A provides a syntax reference for BPEL version 1.1. The appendix covers standard BPEL activities and elements, functions, attributes, and faults.

Product Details

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Publication date : Jan 08, 2006
Length: 372 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781904811817
Vendor :
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Length: 372 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781904811817
Vendor :
Oracle
Languages :
Concepts :

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Table of Contents

7 Chapters
Introduction to BPEL and SOA Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Web Services Technology Stack Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Service Composition with BPEL Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Advanced BPEL Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Oracle BPEL Process Manager and BPEL Designer: Overview Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Oracle BPEL Process Manager: Advanced Features Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
MS BizTalk Server Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

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John Matlock Mar 29, 2006
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
There have been an entire bowl of alphabet soup regarding various kinds of distributed processing systems. All of them, in their time, achieved a certain level of usage. None of them has done much to change the basic way we do business communications. That may be changing.The development of the internet from a little system to exchange technical papers to a worldwide set of sites, all speaking internet protocol, have generated the expansion of broadband services all across the world from New York City to small towns in the third world. The basic ability of an individual to seek information has subsequently been expanded with XML so that information can be exchanged between computers of different types with different operating systems easily and without having to understand the characteristics of the computer at the other end. XML is a very open standard and it has some weaknesses. Enter BPEL to establish a set of standards, some common ways of doing things, and a generally more organized approach.BPEL servers have been developed by, and there are URLs to: Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, BEA, Sun and at least four open-source implementations.While this is a beginners book in so far as BPEL is concerned, it is presumed that the reader has some experience with XML, web services, and some kind of web services developent system such as J2EE or .NET.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Vinicius C. Carvalho May 30, 2007
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
This is a good book for those seeking an initial view of process and BPEL. The book covers the basics of BPEL profile 1.1, and until chapter 4 is a good resource of information. I don't like books that binds the technology to an specific implementation, and that's the case of the book after chapter 4, it binds examples to Oracle BPEL process servers (which I've already used in production and find it a poor implementation) and Microsoft Biz Talk (never used it). It would be much better if more real world examples could be provided instead of specific providers mechanisms for deploying, creating etc. This should be a readers choice, and the product manuals take care of that. I'm a great fan of the author, have read many of his books, this one had everything to be on my top shell, but, if only there was no more chapters after the 4th.Just my 2 cents.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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