BPEL & XPDL

Robert M. Shapiro Chair, Process Interchange, WfMC Senior Vice President, Research Global 360

Copyright 2008, Workflow Management Coalition

Agenda 9:30-10:10 10:10-11:10 BPM 101 Architecture

11:30-12:30
12:30-1:00

XPDL and BPMN

Wf-XML

1:45-2:15 2:15-2:30
2:30-3:00 3:00-3:30 3:30-4:30

Analytics BPAF
BPEL Modeling Open Discussion

BPEL Proposed Standard Web Service composition language Used for web service orchestration BPEL was originally developed by BEA, IBM, and Microsoft. Version 1.1 also includes input from SAP and Siebel. The OASIS TC Web Services Business Process Execution Language now continues the standardization of BPEL BPEL 2.0 Officially adopted in June 2007

WS-BPEL Specifications History

BPEL4WS 1.0 (7/2002)
Original proposal from BEA, IBM, Microsoft Combined ideas from IBMs WSFL and Microsofts XLANG

BPEL4WS 1.1 (5/2003)

Revised proposal submitted to OASIS With additional contributions from SAP and Siebel

WS-BPEL 2.0 (6/2007)

Formalization of 1.1 capabilities OASIS formally adopted standard

WS-BPEL 2.0 and beyond (10/2007)

Additional proposals on the table Vendors beginning to ship products conforming to standards

BPEL Design Goals*

Defines business processes that interact with external entities through Web services The definitions use XML and are not concerned with the graphical representation of processes Defines a set of Web service orchestration concepts Provides both hierarchical and graph-like control regimes Provides data manipulation functions sufficient for manipulation of data needed to define process relevant data and control flow

* Extracted

from Goals of the BPEL4WS Specification by Leymann, Roller, and Thatte, working document submitted to OASIS August 25, 2003

BPEL Design Goals*

Supports an identification mechanism for process instances at the application message level Supports the implicit creation and termination of process instances as the basic lifecycle mechanism Defines a long-running transaction model to support failure recovery Uses Web services as the model for process decomposition and assembly Builds on compatible Web services standards

* Extracted

from Goals of the BPEL4WS Specification by Leymann, Roller, and Thatte, working document submitted to OASIS August 25, 2003

WS-BPEL in the WS Stack

BPEL WSDL, Policy, UDDI, Inspection Transactions Security Reliable Messaging

Business Processes Description

Coordination
SOAP (Logical Messaging) XML, Encoding Other protocols Other services

Quality Of Service Transport and Encoding

BPEL and WSDL BPEL processes exposed as WSDL services

Message exchanges map to WSDL operations WSDL can be derived from partner definitions and the role played by the process in interactions with partners Interfaces exposed by the BPEL process Interfaces consumed by the BPEL process

BPEL Data Model: Variables

Activities input and output kept in scoped variables Scoped variables typed as WSDL messages or XML Schema elements/types

BPEL4People Extension Proposal

A major difference between XPDL and BPEL Proposed by Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle and SAP Draft proposal (version 1.0) published June 2007 Currently soliciting suggestions and comments Acknowledged need to incorporate people as a type of participant, in additional to system centric tasks It proposed defining a new type of basic activity (WSHumanTask) which uses human tasks as an implementation Currently no roadmap timeline for this proposal to be formally drafted as spec; work in progress

BPEL vs. XPDL

Copyright 2008, Workflow Management Coalition

XPDL Enables Process Design Ecosystem

User Needs
Tool- specific Capabilities
Risk/Control Information
Vendor A Process Risk Mgmt

Ownership/Issue Information
Vendor B Process Modeling

Resources/Time Information
Vendor C Process Simulation

Goals/Strategies
Vendor D Process Optimization

Process Deployment (typically one-way)

Process Structure is shared by all tools

Vendor E Workflow Design

Process Model Repository

Vendor F SOA Design

Execution environments have different strengths, no model exchange at this level

Executable Model Repository (e.g. XPDL)

Process Execution

Limited Portability

Executable Model Repository (e.g. BPEL)

Process Execution

People Integration

Runtime Process Integration ( Wf-XML )

How BPEL and XPDL Relate to one another

BPEL is an executable language
Includes only executable operations Does not contain the graphical diagram

Many Engines have proprietary formats

They have a design tool Even BPEL engines have proprietary extensions

XPDL is a design interchange format that represents the graphical diagram

Includes metadata about executable aspects

It is generally not possible to design a process with a tool from one vendor and execute it in another vendors engine
But exchange between design tools is possible

BPEL vs. XPDL (whats common) Process definition standards XML based Built on process flows based on activities Support inter-process messaging based on WSDL Supported by customers, vendors, consultants, academics and governments Adopted by major BPM/ECM/EAI vendors Deployed in production

BPEL vs. XPDL (whats different)

BPEL
Web services based processes System to system processes No organizational based resources No graphical information No sub processes BPEL 2.0 officially adopted in June 2007 Designed for process model interchange Includes organization based resources Stores graphical information (compatible with BPMN) Both web services and non web services based processes Multiple processes in one package XPDL 2.0 released October 2005 (XPDL 1.0 released 2002)

XPDL

BPEL vs. XPDL (when should I use which)

BPEL Great for web services based processes Great for system to system processes Standard support by many BPM/EAI vendors XPDL Facilitates process interchange between design tools, simulators, BPA tools and execution engines Models organization resources required by activities Explicit support for BPMN graphical notation. Interchange format contains both process definitions and graphical representation Standard support by many BPM vendors

Process Thought Leadership