InfoWorld covers BPEL

  • Article

The article is fairly favorable and provides a fairly quick overview of the BPEL 2.0 spec.   Here's some of what's new in BPEL 2.0:

  • New activity types
    • if-then-else replaces BPEL4WS 1.1 “switch”
    • repeatUntil
    • Validate
    • forEach with completion conditions
    • extensionActivity
  • Variable initialization
  • XSLT for variable transformations
  • XPath access to variable data
  • Syntax and semantics for abstract processes

A more complete review of what's new is available in the wiki or you could have a look at the final spec.

The InfoWorld article includes a few quotes from Ron Schmelzer (ZapThink) criticizing BPEL for not supporting human workflows or choreographies.   I like Ron and respect ZapThink's research, but the criticism he raises seem inappropriate - BPEL is not intended for any of the scenarios he raises.