BPEL and Java

Good article BPEL and Java. Introduces basic points of BPEL and positions it. W.R.T BPEL and Java boils down to:

Use BPELJ if you like mixing BPEL and Java in one file.

Or try WSIF for accessing things as web-services.

The BPELJ solution seems really ugly to me, mixed scripting languages are rarely a good idea. Plus it really mucks up portability.

The WSIF is general java API solution for using WSDL as a universal API description, with pluggable bindings for SOAP, EJB's, Java etc. etc. It's seeming less useful with JSR 181 web service meta data annotations that simply let me expose POJO / EJB's / whatever as web-services.

So not really much help there. So it could really be, BPEL use it for intelligent routing, conversation handling and stateful processing. Use something else, e.g. Java for complex processing. Address that something else as a web-service via WSDL and incorporate it into your BPEL script.

One of the comments on this that comes up is what is the relationship between BPEL (orchestration), BPM and Workflow. The JBoss JBPM people would argue that workflow involves humans and task management, BPM involves EAI (i.e. adapters). These distinctions are largely illusionary. The adapter argument is disappearing, most pure play adapter vendors have shut-up shop. Most companies shipping adapters for their products are also addressing them as web-services (meaning they can be directly incorporated in BPEL). As for workflow. Integrating with a task management portal, like a bug-tracking system like Bugzilla, JIRA et al is entirely possible from a BPEL script. This just leaves BPEL.