InfoWorld covers BPEL
The article is fairly favorable and provides a fairly quick overview of the BPEL 2.0 spec. Here's some of what's new in BPEL 2.0:
- New activity types
- if-then-else replaces BPEL4WS 1.1 “switch”
- repeatUntil
- Validate
- forEach with completion conditions
- extensionActivity
- Variable initialization
- XSLT for variable transformations
- XPath access to variable data
- Syntax and semantics for abstract processes
A more complete review of what's new is available in the wiki or you could have a look at the final spec.
The InfoWorld article includes a few quotes from Ron Schmelzer (ZapThink) criticizing BPEL for not supporting human workflows or choreographies. I like Ron and respect ZapThink's research, but the criticism he raises seem inappropriate - BPEL is not intended for any of the scenarios he raises.
