FAQ

["John Evdemon" <jevdemon@microsoft.com>]

 <<WSBPEL DRAFT FAQ.txt>> Hello all,

 A while ago I asked for feedback on a TC FAQ.  I have attached a draft
that incorporates some initial feedback from Monica and Ugo.  Please
respond with any additional questions or concerns.  

If there is no feedback by 10/28 I will assume the TC is happy with the
current version (attached) and submit it to OASIS.

Thanks!

John

1.  What is the need for the specification?

Today's web services standards are stateless, meaning that an
interaction lasts as long as it takes to get a message from one place to
another. However, business processes are far from stateless: they are
potentially very complex and require a long series of time and data
dependent interactions. These must happen in the appropriate sequence
and they need to specify the actions to be taken should an exception
occur.  BPEL4WS is a language for describing that sequence of
interactions and exception handling in an interoperable way that can be
shared across platforms, applications, transports and protocols.

The Business Process Execution Language is a XML-based language for
formally describing interoperable business processes and business
interaction protocols.  It defines how web services are connected
together and in what sequence in order to accomplish a particular task

The Business Process Execution Language builds on the foundation of web 
services specifications, such as SOAP, XML, WSDL, and UDDI, with the goal 
of facilitating sophisticated web services scenarios involving business
transactions.  The Business Process Execution Language will serve as a 
basis for web services orchestration by creating the needed specifications 
to formally describe interoperable business processes and business 
interaction protocols.

BPEL4WS V1.1 was an update to the BPEL4WS specification published by IBM,
Microsoft, and BEA on August 9th 2002.  The revised document is a 
modularized and updated version of the original specification that
clearly identifies the core concepts and required extensions for
BPEL4WS.   The OASIS Web Services Business Process Execution Language 
Technical Committtee is working on updating the BPEL4WS 1.1 specification.

2.  Who should be involved in this development?

Vendors interested in providing business process management products using 
web services technologies.

Anyone with an interest in helping web services evolve from simple
messaging to long-lived, highly complex, cross enterprise collaborative
processes.

Organizations interested in ensuring the deployment of
vertical/industry-specific business processes into loosely-coupled web
services environments.

3.  Who will benefit from this work and how?

Companies interested in automating and integrating their internal business 
processes or thoese related to interactions with their partners.   Any 
organization planning to deploy and support complex business processes 
using web services.

To solve real-life business problems, companies may need to invoke
multiple web services applications inside their firewalls and across
networks to communicate with their customers, partners, and suppliers.
The BPEL4WS specification allows you to sequence and coordinate internal
and external web services to accomplish your business tasks. This means
that the result of one web service may influence which web service gets
called next and it also means that multiple web services can be
coordinated when they must all succeed or fail together as a group.

4. How does this work compare with related efforts at other standards
organizations?

BPEL4WS provides a convergence of the structured process orientation of
XLANG with the graph-oriented approach of WSFL, providing a foundation
for a rich variety of business process modeling styles.  BPEL4WS also
supports both process interface models and executable process models
using a common set of core concepts.   Other initiatives address process
interface models but do not provide support for graph-oriented models
(commonly used in the process modeling world). 

BPEL technologies can be composed with the other web services specifications 
such as security, policy, trust, reliable messaging, transactions and 
coordination to provide robust , secure, reliable,  transacted business 
solutions. 

Related work in this area may include:
    - W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group
    - BPSS 
    - BPMI 
    - others TBD

The WSBPEL TC will evaluate related efforts and determine if a liaison 
should be established.


5.  When will this specification be completed?

We expect to deliver a revised version of the specification in
early to mid 2004.