... In fact, unit testing for BPEL-based applications doesn’t have to be harder than testing any other kind of program. If you take a few reasonable steps you’ll have the information you need to confidently revise and deploy your standards-based composite application using a test-first methodology.

A clear first step is to take the process offline. For example, if your application calls for a credit check, it may be impractical to send 10, 100, or 1,000 requests to the credit agency while you’re testing.

Since before it was first announced that BPEL4People/WS-HumanTask were heading for a standards body, there has been a lot of interest around this new attempt to provide a standard in BPM. BPEL (aka WS-BPEL) has continued to split the workflow community, so isn't this the same fate for BPEL4People? Well the technical committee has had its first face-to-face meeting, so we took the opportunity to talk with several of the people behind the work.

Read the complete interview by Mark Little at InfoQ. 

David A. Chappell writes about a concrete example of one of Oracle’s customers, Verizon Wireless, who is in the process of going green by rewriting their fraud detection application using SOA, EDA, and Web 2.0, and as a result plan to eliminate 6 tons of hardware from their datacenter, and reduce power consumption by 99.5% from 200 kW/h down to 1100 W/h.