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BPELJ: BPEL for Java technology

developerWorks

Level: Advanced

Contributors: IBM, BEA Systems

22 Mar 2004

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BPELJ is a combination of Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and the Java™ programming language, allowing the two languages to be used together to build business process applications.

This white paper proposes a combination of BPEL with the Java language, named BPELJ, that allows these two programming languages to be used together to build complete business process applications. By enabling BPEL and Java to work together, BPELJ allows each language to do what it does best.


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The Web Services BPEL is a programming language for specifying business processes that involve Web services. BPEL is especially good at supporting long-running conversations with business partners. Even before the standard is formally released, it's becoming clear that BPEL will be the most widely-adopted standard for business processes involving Web services.

BPEL is geared towards programming in the large, which supports the logic of business processes. These business processes are self-contained applications that use Web services as activities that implement business functions. BPEL doesn't try to be a general-purpose programming language. Instead, it's assumed that BPEL will be combined with other languages that are used to implement business functions (programming in the small).

BPELJ enables Java and BPEL to cooperate by allowing sections of Java code, called Java snippets, to be included in BPEL process definitions. Snippets are expressions, or small blocks of Java code, that can be used for things such as, but not limited to:

  • Loop conditions
  • Branching conditions
  • Variable initialization
  • Web service message preparation
  • Logic of business functions

BPELJ introduces a few minor changes to BPEL and several extensions to fit BPEL and Java language conveniently together. (The changes to BPEL are listed in the Appendix of the white paper.) However, if any of these changes aren't accepted, BPELJ will use existing features of BPEL with a somewhat more awkward result.

In addition to making it possible to use Java code to do the computational work of a business process, BPELJ also makes it possible to use BPEL to orchestrate long-running interactions with Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) components. There's a lot of business logic that's currently deployed in Java components, and BPELJ makes it possible to create business processes that include these components and Web services within the same business process.


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