Handling exceptions and faults

A BPEL process might encounter a fault at different points in the process.

About this task

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) faults originate from:

Web service invocations (Web Services Description Language (WSDL) faults)
Throw activities
BPEL standard faults that are recognized by Business Process Choreographer

Mechanisms exist to handle these faults. Use one of the following mechanisms to handle faults that are generated by a process instance:

Pass control to the corresponding fault handlers
Compensate previous work in the process
Stop the process and let someone repair the situation (force-retry, force-complete)

A BPEL process can also return faults to a caller of an operation provided by the process. You can model the fault in the process as a reply activity with a fault name and fault data. These faults are returned to the API caller as checked exceptions.

If a BPEL process does not handle a BPEL fault or if an API exception occurs, a runtime exception is returned to the API caller. An example for an API exception is when the process model from which an instance is to be created does not exist.

The handling of faults and exceptions is described in the following tasks.