Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Though they are frequently defined globally, at the process level, you can also specify partner
links within a certain scope, in which case their life cycle matches that of their enclosing
scope.
Say you wanted to create a relationship with a partner service that the process itself will al-
ways initiate. You can use a single
<role>
element within your
<partnerLinkType>
as in
this example, borrowed from the WSDL defined in
Example 9-3
:
//...
<xmlns:plnk="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsbpel/2.0/plnktype"
<plnk:partnerLinkType name="CustomerProcessEsb">
<plnk:role name="CustomerProcessEsbPortTypeRole"
portType="tns:CustomerProcessEsbPortType"/>
</plnk:partnerLinkType>
Defining partner links allows you to manage the conversation between partners, and essen-
tially is a matter of deciding which side of the conversation each participant is on. A partner
link is just a variable that lets you indicate the role of the process, or the role of the partner
service.
In some cases (for example, when using a callback), you need to specify two roles. If you spe-
cify two roles in the partner link type, you can indicate both roles at once.
