WSBPEL FAQ Page - your input needed

["John Evdemon" <jevdemon@microsoft.com>]

Hello all,

Please see the email below.  OASIS is going to put up FAQ pages for each
TC.  If you are interested in contributing to our FAQ, please provide
your opinion(s) on the following questions (I have supplied some answers
below to kick start this effort):

----------------

1.  What is the need for the BPEL specification?

Today's web services standards are stateless, meaning that an
interaction lasts as long as it takes to get a message from one place to
another. However, business processes are far from stateless: they are
potentially very complex and require a long series of time and data
dependent interactions. These must happen in the appropriate sequence
and they need to specify the actions to be taken should an exception
occur.  BPEL4WS is a language for describing that sequence of
interactions and exception handling in an interoperable way that can be
shared across platforms, applications, transports and protocols.

The Business Process Execution Language is a XML-based language for
formally describing interoperable business processes and business
interaction protocols.  It defines how web services are connected
together and in what sequence in order to accomplish a particular task

The BPEL4WS specification builds on the foundation of web services
specifications, such as SOAP, XML, WSDL, and UDDI, with the goal of
facilitating sophisticated web services scenarios involving business
transactions.  BPEL4WS will serve as a basis for web services
orchestration by creating the needed specifications to formally describe
interoperable business processes and business interaction protocols.

BPEL4WS V1.1 is an update to the BPEL4WS specification published by IBM,
Microsoft, and BEA on August 9th 2002.  The revised document is a
modularized and updated version of the original specification that
clearly identifies the core concepts and required extensions for
BPEL4WS.   

2.  Who should be involved in this development?

Vendors interested in providing business process management products for
web services.

Anyone with an interest in helping web services evolve from simple
messaging to long-lived, highly complex, cross enterprise collaborative
processes.

Organizations interested in ensuring the deployment of
vertical/industry-specific business processes into loosely-coupled web
services environments.

3.  Who will benefit from this work and how?

Any organization planning to deploy and support complex business
processes using web services.

To solve real-life business problems, companies may need to invoke
multiple web services applications inside their firewalls and across
networks to communicate with their customers, partners, and suppliers.
The BPEL4WS specification allows you to sequence and coordinate internal
and external web services to accomplish your business tasks. This means
that the result of one web service may influence which web service gets
called next and it also means that multiple web services can be
coordinated when they must all succeed or fail together as a group.

4. How does this work compare with related efforts at other standards
organizations?

BPEL4WS provides a convergence of the structured process orientation of
XLANG with the graph-oriented approach of WSFL, providing a foundation
for a rich variety of business process modeling styles.  BPEL4WS also
supports both process interface models and executable process models
using a common set of core concepts.   Other initiatives address process
interface models but do not provide support for graph-oriented models
(commonly used in the process modeling world).

5.  When will this specification be completed?

We expect to deliver a revised version of the BPEL4WS specification in
early 2004.  

----------------

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carol Geyer [mailto:carol.geyer@oasis-open.org]
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 12:55 PM
> To: TC chairs
> Cc: Sharon Burbine
> Subject: [chairs] New OASIS TC FAQ Pages
> 
> On 25 August, OASIS will be adding a new FAQ page to each TC's public
> website. This will make it easier for prospective users, editors,
people
> who may be considering joining the TC, and others to find answers to
> some basic questions on your work.
> 
> Each TC will be responsible for creating its own FAQ content. The
> following are just general suggestions to get you started; obviously
> each TC will have specific FAQ appropriate for its work.
> 
>   What is the need for this specification?
> 
>   Who should be involved in this development?
> 
>   Who will benefit from this work and how?
> 
>   How does this work compare with related efforts at other standards
> organizations?
> 
>   When will this specification be completed?
> 
> 
> Please let me know if you need assistance in writing an FAQ for your
TC.
> Completed FAQs should be sent to support@oasis-open.org before 25 Aug
> for posting. You may edit your FAQ at any time after it's posted.
> 
> Regards,
> Carol
> 
> ____________________________________________
> Carol Geyer
> Director of Communications
> OASIS
> http://www.oasis-open.org
> carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
> Voice: +1 978.667.5115 x209
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You may leave a Technical Committee at any time by visiting
http://www.oasis-
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