Develop and execute Ws-bpel V2.0 business processes using the Eclipse BPEL plug-in

What is Ws-bpel?

Ws-bpel is a vendor-neutral specification developed by OASIS, which will designate business processes as a set of interactive operations between WEB services. OASIS will define Ws-bpel as follows: "You can describe business processes in two ways." The executable business process models the actual behavior of the participants in the business interaction. Abstract business processes are partially specified processes that are not appropriate for execution. Abstract processes can hide some of the required specific operational information. Abstract processes act as descriptive roles with multiple possible use cases, including observable behavior and process templates. The intent of Ws-bpel is to model the behavior of an executable process and an abstract process.

"Ws-bpel provides a language for the specification of an executable business process and an abstract business process." By doing this, it expands the WEB service interaction model and enables it to support business transactions. Ws-bpel will define an interoperable, integrated model that should help expand automated process integration within the enterprise space and business-to-business space. ”

Apache Foundation Its Web services Orchestration Execution Language (Web service Business process Execution Language,ws-bpel) V2.0 implementation called Orchestration Dire ctor Engine (ODE). ODE will perform ws-bpel processes that can communicate with Web services, send and receive messages, and so on. The Eclipse BPEL Project is a related open source project that will provide an Eclipse plug-in for the visual development of the Ws-bpel V2.0 process (see "What Ws-bpel is" if you are not yet aware of this technology).

At the time of this writing, ODE V1.1 and Eclipse BPEL Project milestone M3 are the latest versions. This article examines these products and describes how to use the Apache ODE and Eclipse BPEL projects to create your own BPEL processes and integrate them into your application.

If you are more familiar with BPMN, you may need to look at the articles written and published in DeveloperWorks by Tyler Anderson, "execute business processes with Eclipse," to process business processes, and to view the use of Eclipse STP BPMN Modele R's Tutorial.

Software Installation

Your operating system can be a recent version of microsoft®windows®, linux®, or Mac OS x. This article is written using Linux, so you may want to adjust the file location based on the style of the operating system. Before you install ODE and BPEL for Eclipse, make sure that your computer has the following software installed:

java™v5.0 or later

Tomcat V5.5 or later

Eclipse v3.3.x with the following plug-ins installed:

EMF v2.3.x

GEF v3.3.x

DTP STK v1.5.x

WTP (Web Tools Platform) v2.0.x

Please refer to the Installation guide for each application for installation.

Apache ODE Installation

Download ODE. Launch the Apache Tomcat Web container and deploy the Ode.war module in the release archive using Tomcat Manager, which should be found in http://localhost:8080/manager/html on your computer. To check for success, visit http://localhost:8080/ode/, which displays the status of your computer's Ode Web service.

Eclipse's BPEL support

To install the Eclipse BPEL project, run the Eclipse application, launch the Eclipse Update Manager (by clicking Menu Help > Software update > Find & Install) and select New FEA Ture to install the option. Click New Remote Site ... Add the URL http://download.eclipse.org/technology/bpel/update-site/to the New Update Site dialog box, and then name the site Bpel. Click Finish, select the most recent mirror, select BPEL Designer for Eclipse, agree to the license terms, click the Select all option, and then click Next and Finish. Eclipse will remind you of all potential replication conflicts and then warn BPEL that it is being signed. If the provider is eclipse.org, click Install. When the installation is complete, Eclipse will ask you if you want to restart your computer.