| Backgrounder: |
The WS-Stack has a somewhat variable geometry. Each organization – and perhaps each project within each organization – may assemble some of the available WS-x specifications into a fit-for-purpose stack. Each layer of the stack can be adopted separately and piecemeal, and composed with other layers as appropriate. Thus the complexity of the WS-Stack may be controlled and customized by a local architecture process. What we are seeing, however, is a growing acceptance and adoption of a clearly defined orchestration layer, largely represented by WS-BPEL, but with some alternatives from the Java side (JBI, JBPM, JBPEL). For example, WS-Choreography1 is designed to sit on top of any orchestration, whether BPEL or programmed. As we saw in last month’s piece, there is a wide range of usage patterns supported by BPEL. However, the business value of BPEL depends significantly on the next level of technology on top of BPEL – which might be a thin layer – and this will influence user choice. |
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