BPEL Designer: About BPEL Elements

See Also

A process diagram represents the connected elements in a business process. To edit a diagram, open the Design view and use the icons in the Design view Palette (hereafter, Palette). Drag and drop icons from the Palette onto the BPEL diagram.

To manually invoke the Palette:

The Palette is divided into three sections labeled Web Service, Basic Activities, and Structured Activities.

Placeholders

Placeholders mark places on the diagram where you can insert an element. The behavior of element placeholders illustrates how the BPEL Designer enforces the rules of the WS-BPEL 2.0 specification.

When you drag an element from the Palette, you can see placeholders showing acceptable drop points for this element. These drop points reflect the construction logic of the diagram. As you move the mouse pointer on the diagram, a placeholder that is active for the current mouse pointer position is highlighted. Align the dragged element with one of the placeholders and release the mouse button to insert the element.

Some placeholders are always present on the diagram marking the places where it is necessary to insert an activity so that the BPEL process be valid. These are the places inside container elements, for example the If element.

Adding Child Elements

Many diagram elements allow only one child element in a container element. To overcome this limitation, the BPEL Designer automatically adds a Sequence element as the immediate child and adds a second child activity to the Sequence element.

For example, if you have one child activity for a While element and want to add a second child activity, the BPEL Designer automatically adds a Sequence element inside the While activity. It then places all children activities into the Sequence element.

Wrapping Elements

In the Design view of the BPEL Designer, you can wrap elements with container elements with a single click. The wrap feature might be useful, for example when you want to quickly place an activity inside another activity.

To wrap an activity:

  1. In the IDE, open the BPEL file (.bpel).
    By default, the IDE opens the Design view for the BPEL file.
  2. In the Design view, right-click the activity you want to wrap, point to the Wrap With option, and select the wrapper BPEL activity.

The Process Element

The Process element is not on the Palette because it automatically appears in your new diagram when you create a BPEL Module project. The Process element is a container for all activities that do not come directly from a partner service.

Being a container for all activities, the Process element has important properties. For example, using the pop-up menu of the Process element, you can define correlation sets, variables, and handlers for the entire BPEL process, and add WSDL and XML schema imports.

See Also
BPEL Designer Palette: Web Service
BPEL Designer Palette: Basic Activities
BPEL Designer Palette: Structured Activities
Operations with Elements in the Design View
Understanding Correlation. Using the Correlation Wizard
Adding Correlation Sets Manually
Creating Variables

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