Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Service orchestration - the BPEL process
manager
In order to build composite services, that is, services constructed from other services,
we need a layer that can orchestrate, or tie together, multiple services into a single
larger service. Simple service orchestrations can be done within the Oracle Service
Bus, but more complex orchestrations require additional functionality. These service
orchestrations may be thought of as processes, some of which are low-level processes
and others are high-level business processes.
Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) is the standard way to describe
processes in the SOA world, a task often referred to as service orchestration. The
BPEL process manager in SOA Suite includes support for the BPEL 1.1 standard, with
most constructs from BPEL 2.0 also being supported. BPEL allows multiple services
to be linked to each other as part of a single managed process. The processes may be
short running (taking seconds and minutes) or long running (taking hours and days).
The BPEL standard says nothing about how people interact with it, but BPEL process
manager includes a Human Workflow component that provides support for human
interaction with processes.
The BPEL process manager may also be purchased as a standalone component, in
which case, it ships with the Human Workflow support and the same adapters, as
included in the SOA Suite.
