BPWS4J
A platform for creating and executing BPEL4WS processes.
Date Posted: August 9, 2002
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Update: April 13, 2004
Version 2.1: Support for May version of BPEL4WS 1.1; use of Apache Axis to handle incoming requests; some bug fixes; and a new simple sample that shows BPEL-to-BPEL interaction.
What is BPWS4J?
The IBM Business Process Execution Language for Web Services JavaTM Run Time (BPWS4J) includes the following: a platform upon which can be executed business processes written using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS); a set of samples demonstrating the use of BPEL4WS; and a tool that validates BPEL4WS documents.
The BPWS4J platform also includes an Eclipse plug-in that provides a simple editor for creating and modifying BPEL4WS files. Its main features are as follows:
- Synchronized XML source and tree views of the business process being created
- Flexibility for accomodating bottom-up as well as top-down approaches to process design
- Context-sensitive menus that facilitate creation of specification-compliant processes
- Validation of process against specification requirements during editing session.
How does it work? For each process, the BPWS4J engine takes in a BPEL4WS document that describes the process to be executed, a WSDL document (without binding information) that describes the interface that the process will present to clients (partners in BPEL4WS terms), and WSDL documents that describe the services that the process may or will invoke during its execution.
From this information, the process is made available as a Web service with a SOAP interface. A WSDL file that describes the process's interface may be retrieved from the run-time. The BPWS4J engine supports the invocation, from within the process, of Web services that have a SOAP interface, that are EJBs, or that are normal Java classes.
BPWS4J has been tested on WebSphere Application Server 4.0+ and on Apache Tomcat under both Linux and Windows.
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| | About the technology author(s):
BPBPWS4J was developed by the Component Systems Group at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. Previously, they developed IBM SOAP4J (and later Apache SOAP), NASSL (pre-cursor to WSDL), the NASSL Tool Kit, the initial version of Web Services Tool Kit (WSTK), WSDL, the WSDL Tool Kit, ADS (pre-cursor to WSIL), the ADS Crawler, Web Services Inspection Language (WSIL), Web Services Flow Language (WSFL), WSFL4J (never released publicly), Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF), Web Services Gateway (WSGW), Java API for WSDL (JSR 110), WSDL4J, and Java Record Object Model (JROM) in the Web Services space. Prior to that, they developed the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF), Bean Mark-up Language (BML), Bean Scripting Components (BSC), and XML Treediff.
Francisco (Paco) Curbera, Matthew J. Duftler, Rania Khalaf, Nirmal Mukhi, William A. Nagy, and Sanjiva Weerawarana are the members of the Component Systems group. Paco is the group manager, but he's really just part of the team.
Mangala Gowri is part of IBM's India Research Lab.
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