Modeling business processes for SOA and developing end-to-end IT support has become one of the top IT priorities. The SOA approach is based on services and on processes. Processes are focused on composition of services and in that sense services become process activities.

Experience has shown that the implementation and optimization of processes are the most important factors in the success of SOA projects. SOA is so valuable to businesses because it enables process optimization.

This article examines the Apache Foundation's implementation of WS-BPEL 2.0, the Orchestration Director Engine (ODE) 1.1. It describes how to create your own BPEL process and integrate it into your application. The authors are Ilya Platonov of Axmor, and Artem Papkov and Jim Smith of IBM.

When designing an SOA solution, it's not always clear whether you should use a Web services BPEL process or an ESB mediation flow. This article by Marc Fasbinder of IBM describes considerations that will help you decide which is right for you.

This paper, by Nick Russell and Wil M.P. van der Aalst, proposes the use of workflow resource patterns, as a means of evaluating the BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask proposals. The resource patterns provide a comprehensive description of the various factors that are relevant to human resource management and work distribution in business processes. They offer a means of examining the capabilities of the two proposals from a conceptual standpoint in a way that is independent of specific technological and implementation considerations.

This technical article by Chad W. Coffman discusses how File Adapters are often used as a Receive activity in a BPEL process, polling a directory for a file to arrive and starting based on the state of the file - number of records, filename pattern, directory location, etc. But what if the file adapter is not used as the initiating activity? The adapter configuration options change when the adapter is configured to work 'inline' (synchronous read or write operation) instead of at the beginning of the BPEL process.