(click on the picture for a screenshot)

The goal of the BPEL Project is to add comprehensive support to Eclipse for the definition, authoring, editing, deploying, testing and debugging of WS-BPEL 2.0 processes. WS-BPEL (Web Services Business Process Execution Language), or BPEL, is a vendor-neutral specification being developed by OASIS to specify business processes as a set of interactions between web services. By providing these tools, this project aims to build a community around support for BPEL in Eclipse. The key pieces of functionality that will be provided are: Designer. A GEF-based editor that provides a graphical means to author BPEL processes. Model. An EMF model that represents the WS-BPEL 2.0 specification. Validation. A validator which operates on the EMF model and produces errors and warnings based on the specification. Runtime Framework. An extensible framework which will allow for deployment and execution of BPEL processes from the tools into a BPEL engine. Debug. A framework which will allow the user to step through the execution of a process, including support for breakpoints.

The implementation will be extensible to third-party vendors in a number of ways. The editor will be extensible to support new activity types, property pages for extensibility of existing constructs, an extensible palette, and product-specific branding capabilities. The runtime deployment framework will be extensible so that third parties may add support for a variety of runtime engines. The model will support extensions to provide new activities or attributes, and the validator will allow for validation of these extensions.

While the key pieces for a 1.0 release are identified above, we welcome suggestions of additional areas in which this project could participate. Anyone who has ideas is welcome to make comments or proposals to the newsgroup and assist with the evolution of the project.

How to Participate

Installation: Instructions on how to download and install.

Feedback:

• Bug reports may be logged to Bugzilla.
• The newsgroup should be used for general discussion and questions.
• The mailing list should be used for development-related discussion.

Milestone Plan

Please see the Milestone Plan for details on the scheduling of various items and release dates.

The BPEL Team.

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