Chapter 8: BPEL Activity Highlights

Overview

This chapter highlights selected BPEL activities, as well as event handlers.

As noted earlier, BPEL activities are divided into two categories. A basic activity does a task such as assigning a value to a variable. A structured activity embeds other activities (basic or structured) and specifies an order or condition that affects the circumstance in which those activities run.

Any activity can include either or both of the following optional, standard attributes: name and suppressJoinFailure. The name attribute's value is used for documentation and possibly for display in a BPEL editor, but the attribute has an additional use in compensation. The compensateScope activity uses the name value to refer to a particular scope or invoke activity, as described later.

The suppressJoinFailure attribute affects what happens in a flow activity after a join condition fails. If the attribute value is yes, the BPEL engine issues the activity that logically follows the target activity. If the attribute value is no, the BPEL engine throws a fault.