Business Process Management Languages

Last month, I introduced service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management. This month, I will discuss the first of several business process management languages: business process execution language for Web services. In the following months, I will address business process modeling language (BPML) and business process specification schema (BPSS) for ebXML.

Business Process Execution Language

Recognizing the complexity of accessing Web services in synchronous and asynchronous environments, in August 2002, IBM, Microsoft and BEA introduced their jointly defined Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS, or just BPEL). Its specification is now being managed by OASIS.1

BPEL combines capabilities of IBM's Web services flow language (WSFL) from IBM WebSphere Business Integrator and those of Microsoft's XLANG as used by Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002. BPEL includes WSFL support for graph-oriented processes, with XLANG support of structural constructs for processes. BPEL is designed to support implementation of any complex ...