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Designing complex and large business processes requires a language that supports modularization and re-use in a portable, interoperable way. This white paper outlines an extension to WS-BPEL that allows for the definition of sub-processes that can be reused within the same or across multiple WS-BPEL processes. The white paper also describes different invocation scenarios and introduces an appropriate coordination protocol used for interoperable invocation of sub-processes across infrastructures from different vendors.
The BPEL language currently does not support the explicit definition of business process "fragments" that can be invoked from another (or the same) business process. The only way to approximate similar behavior today is by defining a complete business process as an independent service and invoking it using an <invoke> activity. The fact that the invoked activity is really implemented as another process is completely hidden from the parent process, in other words, there is no chance to establish any coupling of process instance lifecycles.
The extension proposed in this whitepaper provides the means for the invocation of a business process as a sub-process of another business process, such that its lifecycle is coupled to the lifecycle of the parent process. It allows for the definition of a business process within the context of another business process, so it can be used (and reused) within that other process, and allows a sub-process defined within the context of another business process to access data from its parent process. Finally, it allows for the invocation of sub-processes across BPEL engines.
| Description | Name | Size | Download method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whitepaper in PDF format | ws-bpelsubproc.pdf | 315KB | HTTP |
Information about download methods Get Adobe® Reader®
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BPEL4People
Whitepaper.
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BPEL for Java technology Whitepaper.
- Read Business Process Execution Language for Web Services Version 1.1 for background on BPEL.
- The Web Service Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0 Working draftis available from OASIS.
