Coordination protocols for split BPEL loops and scopes

Abstract

The document presents an approach to enable loops and fault handling, compensating scopes to be split among a set of BPEL processes running on different BPEL engines. A mechanism to split a scope or loop into multiple fragments is presented, then a protocol is defined that can be used to coordinate fragments of a loop or a scope so that those fragments run as if they had been in a single process. The requirements for running split scopes and loops are explained. For compensation, this paper focuses on explicit compensation and makes the assumption that compensation handing does not fail. Two protocols are defined such that they may be plugged into the WS-Coordination framework. The messages between the participant fragments and the coordinator are defined. The information about the participating processes that the coordinator needs to have is specified. An algorithm is provided to locate a fault handler in the hierarchy of scopes that can handle a particular BPEL fault. Additionally, the behavior of both participants and the coordinator are specified.