Web Service Business Process Execution Language, or WS-BPEL, is a standards-based language for defining how business processes interact. WS-BPEL processes describe the orchestration, or large scale interaction, of services within and outside of an enterprise computing environment. WS-BPEL builds upon several standards, such as XML, Web Service Description Language (WSDL), and XPath.
WS-BPEL is an important part of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA is a software architecture in which applications and data are decomposed into discrete, independent services. Decomposing applications into services allows enterprise application components to be reused and integrated in flexible and efficient ways. Enterprise applications are more agile when using SOA because the components can switch to use new services as their needs dictate.
Figure 1 illustrates a simple business service model. The model describes a business that accepts orders from customers and fulfills those orders by obtaining the requested items from various suppliers. The business also interacts with shipping vendors for delivering the orders to the customer.
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks BPEL Extension allows you to create WS-BPEL orchestration processes within the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks framework. This product builds upon the strength of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks for defining the execution of automated business processing and adds the capability to define service-based orchestrations. WS-BPEL defines the interactions between the services, but it is not involved in the details of the implementation of each service. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks and the ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks BPEL Extension together provide a powerful application development platform that allows you to define a service-oriented architecture and develop the implementation of services.
WS-BPEL is built upon many standards, and many features of the TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks BPEL Extension rely on functionality provided within TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks. Before using TIBCO ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks BPEL Extension, it would be helpful to understand the following: