Topic 3
Business Process Management
using BPEL
Dr.Thanachart Numnonda
Sun Microsystems (Thailand)
Asst.Prof.Thanisa Kruawaisayawan
KMITL

Agenda
 Benefits of BPM?
 What is BPEL?
 BPEL Syntax
 BPEL Tools & Engines
 NetBeans 6.5 Demo
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Benefits of BPM?
3

SOA Framework Recap
User Interface Dashboard (KPI)
User Interface + Single Window (Portal)
Business Process Management (BPEL)
Build Re-usable Services (ESB)
External/Internal Systems
4

Business process
 A real-world activity consisting of a set of logically
related tasks
 When performed in the appropriate sequence, and
according to the correct business rules produces a
business outcome

Example Business Process

Services composition
 The most important SOA concept is composition of
services into business processes.
 Services are composed in a particular order and
provide a set of rule to provide support for business
processes
 It also enable us to modify business processes quickly
 BPEL is used as a dedicated language

Business Process Management
 addresses how organizations can identify, model,
develop, deploy, and manage their business processes
 including processes that involve IT systems and
human interaction.

BPM Benefit
 Reduce the impedance mismatch between business
requirements and IT systems
 Increase employee productivity and reduce operational
costs
 Increase corporate agility and flexibility
 Reduce development costs and effort

Benefit of BPM, SOA and WS
 more flexible and agile
 implementation of a BPM system and the ability to
more easily create, manage, and maintain composite
applications

Silo IT

SOA and Web Services

Business Process Layer

BPM without Services

Need for Business Process
 Developing the web services and exposing the
functionality is not sufficient
 We also need a way to orchestrate these functionality in
the right order
 Example:
 Concert ticket purchase Web service has 3 operations,
which need to be performed in the following order
> Getting a price quote
> Purchase a ticket
> Confirmation and cancellation

Business Process & Workflow
 A business process describes what has to be done
(including input and output). It might include manual
activities (Human Task) and might use any kinds of
resources.
 A workflow describes how a certain result can be
reached. It looks further into the details of all the steps
or activities.

Example of a business process
hierarchy with a workflow layer

Orchestration & Choreography
 Orchestration
 Business Process with central coordinator
 WS-BPEL
 Choreography
 Business Collaboration
 WS-CDL

Orchestration

Choreography

What is BPEL?
21

Business Process Languages
• BPEL / WS-BPEL : OASIS Standard
• XLANG and the new version XLANG/s from Microsoft
• BPML (Business Process Modeling Language) from
BPMI.org
• WS-CDL (Web Services Choreography Description
Language)
• BPSS (Business Process Specification Schema), part of the
ebXML framework

WS- BPEL
• Web Service- Business Process Execution Language
• Version 1.0 released by IBM, Microsoft and BEA in Aug 2002
• Version 1.1 submitted to OASIS April 2003
• Version 2.0 available (2007)
• XML language for describing business processes based on
Web services
• Convergence of XLANG (Microsoft) and WSFL (IBM)
• Unprecendented industry consensus
• IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, BEA, SAP, Siebel …

Business Processes with BPEL
• BPEL can describes business processes in two
distinct ways
• Executable business processes specify the exact
details of business processes and can be executed
by a BPEL engine.
• Abstract business processes specify only the
public message exchange between parties, without
including the specific details of process flows.
They are not executable and are rarely used

BPEL “Fixes” WSDL
• WSDL: unordered set of operations
– Operations are message exchanges
• Need rules for ordering

BPEL Is a Web Service Sequencing
Language
• Process defines “conversation” flow chart
– Conversation consists of only WSDL-described message
exchanges.
• Process instance is a particular conversation
following the chart
– Execution systems can support multiple concurrent
conversations.

BPEL is a WS Composition
Language
• Consumes services (invoke)
• Creates services (receive/reply)
• Aggregates fine-grained services
• Creates coarser-grained service

Value Proposition of WS-BPEL
• Portable business processes
– Built on top of an interoperable infrastructure of Web
services
• Industry wide language for business processes
– Common skill set and language for developers
• Choice of process engines
– Standards lead to competitive offerings

BPEL Syntax
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Developing BPEL
• Requires a good understanding of WSDL
• Knowledge of XML / BPEL commands
• For ease , uses modeling diagram like BPMN or
UML

BPEL Document Structure
<process>
<!– Definition and roles of process participants -->
<partnerLinks> ... </partnerLinks>
<!- Data/state used within the process -->
<variables> ... </variables>
<!- Properties that enable conversations -->
<correlationSets> ... </correlationSets>
<!- Exception handling -->
<faultHandlers> ... </faultHandlers>
<!- Error recovery – undoing actions -->
<compensationHandlers> ... </compensationHandlers>
<!- Concurrent events with process itself -->
<eventHandlers> ... </eventHandlers>
<!- Business process flow -->
(activities)*
</process>

<partnerlink>
• BPEL enable us to accurately specify relations
between several web services in the business
process.
• These relations are called partner links

BPEL: Relationship to Partners
WSDL
Partner Service
Partner Service
Partner Service
Orchestrating Process
(BPEL) Partner Service

Business Process

Business Process & <partner links>

BPMN
• Business Process Manafement Notation
• Notation is similar to UML
• Allow business people to describe a process flow
from a hugh level
• BPEL is more suited to technical people.

Simple BPEL Graphic Editor

BPEL Activities
Basic Activities Structured Activities
 <invoke>  <sequence>
 <receive>  <while>
 <reply>  <pick>
 <assign>  <flow>
 <throw>  <scope>
 <wait>  <compensate>
 <empty>  <switch>
 <link>

BPEL: Basic Activities
 <invoke>
 To invoke a one-way or request/response operation on a
portType offered by a partner
 <receive>
 To do a blocking wait for a matching message to arrive
 Can be the instantiator of the business process
 <reply>
 To send a message in reply to a message that was received
through a <receive>
 The combination of a <receive> and a <reply> forms a
request-response operation on the WSDL portType for the
process

BPEL: Basic Activities (cont.)
 <assign>
 Can be used to update the values of variables with new data
 <throw>
 Generates a fault from inside the business process
 <wait>
 Allows you to wait for a given time period or until a certain
time has passed
 <empty>
 Allows you to insert a "no-op" instruction into a business
process
 This is useful for synchronization of concurrent activities, for
instance

BPEL: Structured Activities
 <sequence>
 Perform activities in sequential order
 <flow>
 Perform activities in parallel
 <switch>
 Conditional choice of activities
 <scope>
 Enclose multiple activities in a single scope

BPEL Tools & Engine
43

BPEL Components

BPEL Designer Tools
• IDE can be used to write BPEL or BPMN
• Examples:
– NetBeans 6.1/6.5
– Eclipse
– Oracle Jdeveloper 10g
– IBM WebSphere Studio
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BPEL Server
• Provides a run time environment for executing
BPEL
• Examples
– GlassFishESB (via BPEL SE)
– Oracle BPEL Process Manager
– Microosoft Biztalk
– Sun Java CAPS
– IBM WebSphere Business Integration Server
– Active BPEL Engine
– Apache Agila
46

NetBeans 6.5 BPEL Editor
47

Example : BPEL
48

GlassFish BPEL SE
• GlassFish V2 has OpenESB
• Project OpenESB implements ESB runtime using
Java Business Integration (JBI) as the foundation
• JBI container has BPEL SE (Service Engine)
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NetBeans 6.5 Demo
50

Resources
 Some contents are borrowed from the presentation
slides of Sang Shin, Java™ Technology Evangelist,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
 Business Process Execution Language for Web
Services, Matjaz B. Juric
 Java SOA Cookbook, Eben Hewitt
 Building SOA-Based Composite Applications Using
NetBeans IDE 6, David Salter
 Understanding SOA with Web Services, Eric
Newcomer
 SOA in Practice, Nicolai M. Josuttis
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Thank you
thanachart.numnonda@sun.com
twitter.com/thanachart
www.facebook.com/thanachart
www.thaijavadev.com
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