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Subject: FAQ
<<WSBPEL DRAFT FAQ.txt>> Hello all, A while ago I asked for feedback on a TC FAQ. I have attached a draft that incorporates some initial feedback from Monica and Ugo. Please respond with any additional questions or concerns. If there is no feedback by 10/28 I will assume the TC is happy with the current version (attached) and submit it to OASIS. Thanks! John
1. What is the need for the 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 Business Process Execution Language 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. The Business Process Execution Language 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 was 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. The OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language Technical Committtee is working on updating the BPEL4WS 1.1 specification. 2. Who should be involved in this development? Vendors interested in providing business process management products using web services technologies. 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? Companies interested in automating and integrating their internal business processes or thoese related to interactions with their partners. 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). BPEL technologies can be composed with the other web services specifications such as security, policy, trust, reliable messaging, transactions and coordination to provide robust , secure, reliable, transacted business solutions. Related work in this area may include: - W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group - BPSS - BPMI - others TBD The WSBPEL TC will evaluate related efforts and determine if a liaison should be established. 5. When will this specification be completed? We expect to deliver a revised version of the specification in early to mid 2004.
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