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BPEL4WS will provide a standard programming language that businesses can use to define how to combine Web services to accomplish tasks. WS-Coordination describes how the individual Web services within that task will interact. The WS-Transaction standard will ensure that all the transactions are either successfully completed or fail as a group.
In the Web services protocol stack, BPEL4WS is a layer on top of Web Services Description Language (WSDL). It uses WSDL to specify actions that should take place in a business process, and to describe the Web services provided by a business process. IBMˇ¦s Web site offers a visual representation of this relationship, along with a detailed explanation of BPEL4WS.
BPEL4WS represents the uniting of two previously competing standards: Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) from IBM, and Microsoftˇ¦s XML business process language in BizTalk Server (XLANG). It is one of a number of emergent standards in the general area of Business Process Management. Others include:
Web Service Choreography Interface (WSCI), backed by BEA, Intalio, SAP, and Sun Business Process Modeling Language (BPML), backed by the Business Process Management Initiative
XML Processing Description Language (XPDL), backed by the Workflow Management Coalition
Business Process Specification SchemaˇXpart of ebXML (BPSS), backed by the e-Business Transition Working Group
Enterprise Distributed Object Computing (EDOC), backed by the Object Management Group
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