Orchestration Standards Move Ahead

Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), a specification that defines how Web services can be combined to orchestrate long-lasting business processes, has been submitted for standardization by a group led by IBM and Microsoft. BPEL is an XML-based language that allows developers to formally describe a business process, such as the steps involved in processing a loan application or making a purchase request. BPEL could become a key standard for application integration and business-to-business processing, and it will likely be the basis of Microsoft and IBM’s future application integration products.

Like many earlier standards for Web services, BPEL was co-authored by Microsoft and IBM, but also includes input from BEA. The group has submitted BPEL to the Organization for Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a vendor consortium of software vendors, consultants, and IT organizations originally formed to promote Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) interoperability but now focused on XML. Although a rival technology sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Oracle and others, has been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), BPEL is quickly gaining support from many enterprise application vendors, such as SAP and Siebel Systems.