Support of WS-BPEL

[spike_s]

Hi,

Could you explain to me how JBoss ESB supports WS-BPEL. From what I

know, service choreography, is a functionnality that could be offered inside

an ESB as a component. But in JBoss ESB this functionnality is external, And

the BPEL Engine Interact with the JBoss ESB via its exposed webservices

thanks to JBossWSAdapter. So what are the specifities of WS-BPEL support?

Regards.

[burrsutter]

In ESB 4.2 MR2, the quickstart sample called webservice_bpel demonstrates our current integration with Active Endpoints open source BPEL engine. The present demonstration shows it running under Tomcat since the open source version recommends that approach. However, it can be made to run in the same JVM as the ESB. However, this technique hasn't been documented to my knowledge.

The BPEL spec expects WSDL-based endpoints (aka Web Services) and our current integration demonstrates the use of having the ESB expose WS endpoints and the BPEL solution "orchestrating" them.

Assuming all of this can run in one JVM (which it can though presently undocumented), would that address your needs?

Burr

[spike_s]

Thanks Burr for the reply, I will test the sample called webservice_bpel.

Regards

[tfennelly]

We'd be interested in knowing what you'd expect to see on this? It makes sense to us (and others, from what I've read) that this type of orchestration NOT be done directly on the ESB. In these specific scenario, we tend to think of the ESB as being the integration glue between your business orchestration processes (BPEL processes) and the underlying/target services (probably SOAP unaware) being orchestrated.

WRT running it all in the same VM, you're simply talking about installing and running ActiveBPEL on the same JBoss AS as is running the ESB.

[spike_s]

I think, too, that it's a right conception of the relationship between service choreography and the Core of an ESB. But I asked my question because in the new release MR2 it is said that it supports WS-BPEL. But the action "JBossWSAdapter" is already there since the previous release. So it has confused me a little and I asked if I missed something else added to specifically enable WS-BPEL support (besides of course the introduction of the BPEL sample).

Regards.

[tfennelly]

JBossWSAdapter is there since the previous release?? I don't think so :-)

Anyway.... yes, I see where you are coming from and you are correct... at this point, we don't need to build BPEL specific ESB components. What the ESB does (and this is what's new) is support exposing non webservice endpoints as webservices (JBossWSAdapter) + support invocation of external SOAP endpoints from the ESB (SOAPUIClient). These new capabilities (with more and improved to come) allow us to support WS-BPEL based service orchestration through the ESB.

We have a number of ideas on how to improve the JBossWSAdapter and SOAPUIClient components. we'll be getting these into the codebase soon (i.e. before the 4.2GA).