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Advanced BPEL Information
Advanced resources to gain a deeper understanding of BPEL's role and impact

Four Star Resources

Specification and Validation of the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services
"In this paper, we formally define an abstract operational semantics for the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services in terms of a real-time distributed abstract state machine."
Source: School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University

Using BPEL Process Descriptions for Building up Strategic Models of Inter-Organizational Networks
A deep, technical application of BPEL containing architectural, code, and design perspectives.
Source: Knowledge-based Systems Group

What is BPEL and why is it so important to my business?
A comprehensive overview of how BPEL works, with a focus on how it can contribute to business efficiency and effectiveness. Contains practical guidance for businesses on the potential benefits of investing in BPEL, and a general discussion of how BPEL originated and the factors driving its take-up, which is predicted to be high.
Source: Softcare EC Inc.

Business Process Execution Language for Web Services - BPEL4WS: The Promise of Portable Business Processes
Excellent practical overview of BPEL directed at programmers. Includes discussion of 'how to process activities in sequence or in parallel, program using a structured or graph based paradigm, store and manipulate XML values in containers, define and nest scopes. define, throw and catch faults, define and invoke compensation handlers, use web services as sub-routines and send and receive messages.'
Source: BEA

The Enterprise: Business Process Management Languages, Part 1: BPEL
Concise but comprehensive description of BPEL, with list of sample activity constructs and a travel industry example in graphical form.
Source: DM Review

Build Your Business Apps With BPEL
'Examine a collection of commercial and open source tools to support the full lifecycle of BPEL development'. This informative article uses real-world problems to illustrate the use of BPEL.
Source: Enterprise Architect

The Definitive BPEL and Java Article
News forum containing posts and responses on various aspects of BPEL programming and uses.
Source: TheServerSide.com

BPEL Is the Best Shot for a Business Process Standard
This authoritative research paper argues that BPEL is best placed to become the business process standard by 2005.
Source: Gartner

BPEL: make your services flow
In-depth feature directed at IT developers. Explains how BPEL can be used to tie transactional services, events, and user tasks into easy-to-adapt business flows.
Source: Web Services Journal

An Introduction to Business Process Execution Language (BPEL): Part 1
Explains the relationship between SOA and BPM, discusses BPEL goals and language constructs, explains BPDM and how it relates to BPEL, and comments on limitations to BPEL.
Source: Business Integration Journal

BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services)
Graphical overview of how BPEL works, with examples of simple programming.
Source: IBM Research

Using BPEL: What IT Managers Need to Know
Covers the role of BPEL, why you need BPEL and how BPEL will be used. An excellent overview and primer.
Source: Web Services Journal

Pattern Based Analysis of BPEL4WS
This 20-page paper presents an in-depth analysis of BPEL4WS, using a framework based on a collection of workflow and communication patterns.
Source: Queensland University of Technology, Australia

BPEL Unleashed: Putting A Modern Business Process Execution Standard to Work
An in-depth look at BPEL, including the rise of BPEL, the scope of BPEL, the BPEL environment, BPEL and SOA, and BPEL in use
Source: Web Services Journal

Explainer: BPEL
A semi-technical and services-oriented look at BPEL, including hypothetical insurance industry use cases.
Source: Computerworld

Web Service Processes - BPEL & Web Services (PPT)
An Exceptional functional, technical and architectural overview
Source: University Paderborn

Agile To The Bone
A concrete look at BPEL's acceptance, market status and outlook, and vendor involvement. From the article, "BPEL has near-universal acceptance as an orchestration standard even if vendors disagree about how to incorporate human workflow."
Source: Intelligent Enterprise Magazine

Time Well Spent: Web Services Mature More
High quality BPEL-specific content from Gartner's Application Integration and Web Services Summit 2004. Includes BPEL adoption timelines, BPEL usage in Global 2000 new development and deployments, and an assessment of BPEL's strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities
Source: Gartner

Creating Web Processes using BPEL4WS (PPT)
A valuable, comprehensive look into Web processes from a BPEL perspective
Source: University of Georgia

A Hands-on Introduction to BPEL, Part 2: Advanced BPEL
Part two of this impressive tutorial that provides examples of how to design and implement BPEL processes. An article directed at the IT specialist rather than the general reader, which provides sample programming language for building a BPEL process.
Source: Matjaz B. Juric

Three Star Resources

BPEL can usher in a new era of Business Process Management
Article on an interview with Akshay Aggarwal, Solution Architect, BEA Systems, about the uses of BPEL. Mentions the limitations of BPEL and what is being done to address these.
Source: Network Magazine

Application Server Architecture and BPEL: Promises and challenges
Discusses the place of BPEL in the trend towards SOA-based applications.
Source: Web Services Journal

The Role of BPEL in Business Process Integration
The goal of this short paper is to explain the value of BPEL and to briefly describe how Microsoft supports BPEL in BizTalk Server 2004."
Source: Microsoft

Where is BPEL 2.0 going?
Unfortunately, by pushing BPEL in the wrong direction, the working groups and editors will achieve nothing: the B2B model supported by BPEL will not be able to compete with the one proposed by WS-CDL and ebXML BPSS, while the at the same time, we would still be waiting for an "orchestration" language that no one else is working on." A controversial analysis of the state, direction, and value of BPEL.
Source: ebPML.org

W3C Inks Key Web Services Language
Contrasts BPEL with the Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL). Sample: "Think of a troupe of dancers," Daly said. "With BPEL each individual dancer knows what she needs to do, whether its jazz, or tap. With WS-CDL, the choreographer is the language that tells all 40 dancers how to move and in what sequence."
Source: internetnews.com

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