Issue - 92 - Mandatory & Optional BPEL Extensibility

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Issue - 92 - Mandatory & Optional BPEL Extensibility

Status: open
Date added: 22 Jan 2004
Submitter: Yaron Goland
Date submitted: 21 January 2004
Description: Spec - Main

BPEL provides for extension points but does not provide guidance on how they should be used. This brings up a number of issues:

1. If the extension is optional, that is, it can be ignored if it is not understood, how should it be marked? If the extension is mandatory, that is, the BPEL MUST NOT be processed if the extension is not understood, then how should the extension be marked?

2. Should any mandatory extensions be declared at the top of the BPEL file? The example that motivated this question is related to query and expression languages. For example, imagine that one has a BPEL where all the queries but one use the globally set query language. One particular query, buried many levels deep, overrides the default. It would be hard for a reader of the BPEL program to know the override was there and it would require that a BPEL engine do quite a bit of processing before hitting the override and realizing, for example, that it doesn't support the specified language and so must reject the BPEL. So one could imagine an up front declaration that says "here is a list of URIs that identify what mandatory extensions and query/expression languages I use."

Changes: 22 Jan 2004 - new issue

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