BPEL

ALSO CALLED: Business Process Execution Language for Web Services, BPEL4WS, Business Process Execution Language
DEFINITION: BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) for Web services is an XML-based language designed to enable task-sharing for a distributed computing or grid computing environment - even across multiple organizations - using a combination of Web services. Written by developers from BEA Systems, IBM, and Microsoft, BPEL combines and replaces IBM's WebServices Flow Language (WSFL) and Microsoft's XLANG specification.  … 
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BPEL DEFINITION (continued): …  (BPEL is also sometimes identified as BPELWS or BPEL4WS.)Using BPEL, a programmer formally describes a business process that will take place across the Web in such a way that any cooperatingentity can perform one or more steps in the process the same way. In a supply chain process, for example, a BPEL program might describe a business protocol that formalizes what pieces of information a product order consists of, and what exceptions may have to behandled. The BPEL program would not, however, specify how a given Web service should process a given order internally. Getting started with BPEL … 
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