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Business Process Execution Language

  • Reference work entry
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

Synonyms

BPEL; BPEL4WS

Definition

The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) has emerged as a standard for specifying and executing processes. It is supported by many vendors and positioned as the “process language of the Internet.” BPEL is XML based and aims to enable “programming in the large,” i.e., using BPEL new services can be composed from other services.

Key Points

BPEL [2,3] supports the modeling of two types of processes: executable and abstract processes. An abstract, (not executable) process is a business protocol, specifying the message exchange behavior between different parties without revealing the internal behavior for any one of them. This abstract process views the outside world from the perspective of a single organization or (composite) service. An executable processviews the world in a similar manner. However, things are specified in more detail such that the process becomes executable, i.e., an executable BPEL process specifies the...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Aalst van der W.M.P., Dumas M., ter Hofstede A.H.M., Russell N., Verbeek H.M.W., and Wohed P. Life after BPEL? In WS-FM, 2005, pp. 35–50.

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  2. Alves A., Arkin A., Askary S., Barreto C., Bloch B., Curbera F., Ford M., Goland Y., Guzar A., Kartha N., Liu C.K., Khalaf R., Koenig D., Marin M., Mehta V., Thatte S., Rijn D., Yendluri P., and Yiu A. Web services business process execution language, version 2.0 (OASIS Standard). WS-BPEL TC OASIS. http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsbpel/2.0/wsbpel-v2.0.html, 2007.

  3. Andrews T., Curbera F., Dholakia H., Goland Y., Klein J., Leymann F., Liu K., Roller D., Smith D., Thatte S., Trickovic I., and Weerawarana S. Business process execution language for web services, version 1.1. Standards Proposal by BEA Systems, International Business Machines Corporation, and Microsoft Corporation, 2003.

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  4. Kloppmann M., Koenig D., Leymann F., Pfau G., Rickayzen A., von Riegen C., Schmidt P., and Trickovic I. WS-BPEL extension for people BPEL4People. In Proc. 22nd Int. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling, 2005.

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  5. Wohed P., van der Aalst W.M.P., Dumas M., and ter Hofstede A.H.M. Analysis of Web Services Composition Languages: The Case of BPEL4WS. In I.Y. Song, S.W. Liddle, T.W. Ling, and P. Scheuermann, editors. In Proc. 22nd Int. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling, 2003, pp. 200–215.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    W. M. P. van der Aalst

Authors
  1. W. M. P. van der Aalst
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

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© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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van der Aalst, W. (2009). Business Process Execution Language. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1194

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