The document discusses Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the role of the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). It defines SOA as an architectural style that allows components to work together through standardized interfaces. BPEL is presented as an XML-based language used to specify business processes composed of discrete web services. BPEL allows the orchestration of services by defining message sequences and processing logic. It bridges the bottom-up exposure of services and the top-down definition of business processes in SOA.