Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)

Before we jump right into a discussion on Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) we need to set a framework for its use. It is important for managers, developers and DBAs to have an understanding of how BPEL can benefit them. Business process management (BPM) technology is a framework for applications that can effectively track and orchestrate business processes. BPM solutions will automatically manage processes and process flow, but allow for manual intervention when necessary. BPM might coordinate the extraction of customer information from a database or manage a new customer information transaction. BPM could generate transactions in multiple related systems or support straight-though processing without human intervention. BPM allows you to automate tasks involving information from multiple systems with rules to define the sequence in which the tasks are performed as well as responsibilities, conditions and other aspects of the process. BPM not only allows a business process to be executed more efficiently, it also provides the tools to allow you to measure performance and identify opportunities for improvement. A benefit of BPM is that changes can be easily made in processes or flow by adding, removing or updating a process.To take the advantage of the whole process the systems should follow Service Oriented architecture.

Business Process excecution language

Business process excecution language defines a notation for specifying the business process behavior.

The following are BPEL servers aviaible they are

ActiveBPEL Engine
IBM BPEL4WS Editor and Java Run-Time
Oracle BPEL Process Manager
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004(Biz talk server orchestration)
Other BPEL Servers
Here iam giving a brief overview of Oracle BPEL server.

Oracle's BPEL server allows you to connect to data sources via its adaptors

1) File adapters
2) FTP adapters
3) Oracle advanced querying
4) Database server querying
5) JMS adapter
6) Oracle application adaptors
Oracle's BPM has a buit-in support for the following

XSLT Mapper
XPATH
XSD
XSL.

This BPM is completely built on XML.
This is an abstract from Search Oracle's article on BPEL
Hope this gives an idea about BPEL.

To summaries, if you want to implement BPEL in a project, the following are the steps

Expose the service(s) (by registering)
Invoke a process flow
Perform data transformation
Manage exception processing
Include user tasks
Place sensors throughout the process flow
Monitor the process