SOA 11g: BPEL Activities

Assign Activity

* For data manipulation, e.g copy.
* Target node operations:
- Expression: Drag this icon to a target node to invoke the Expression Builder dialog for assigning an XPath expression to that node.
- Literal (BPEL 2.0) or XML fragment (BPEL 1.1): Drag this icon to a target node to invoke a dialog for assigning a literal or XML fragment to that target node.
- Remove: Drag this icon to a target node to create a bpelx:remove extension rule.
- Rename: Drag this icon to rename a target node. This adds a bpelx:rename extension rule with an elementTo attribute.
- Recast: Drag this icon to recast a target node. This adds a bpelx:rename extension rule with a typeCastTo attribute. This results in an xsi:type attribute in the XML output.

Assert Activity

* This activity enables you to perform an assertion on a specified expression.
* This is a standalone activity in which to specify assertions.
* You can also specify assertions from the Assertions tab in invoke activities, receive activities, and the onMessage branch of pick and scope activities.
* Supported in BPEL 1.1 projects only.

Bind Entity Activity

* This activity enables you to select the entity variable to act as the data handle to access and plug in different data provider service technologies.
* Supported in BPEL 1.1 projects only.

Compensate Activity

* This activity invokes compensation on an inner scope activity that has successfully completed.
* This activity can be invoked only from within a fault handler or another compensation handler.
* Compensation occurs when a process cannot complete several operations after completing others.
* The process must return and undo the previously completed operations.

CompensateScope Activity

* This activity enables you to start compensation on a specified inner scope that has already completed successfully.
* This activity must only be used from within a fault handler, another compensation handler, or a termination handler.
* Supported in BPEL 2 projects only.

Create Entity Activity

* This activity enables you to create an entity variable.
* The entity variable can be used with an Oracle ADF Business Component data provider service using SDO-based data.

Dehydrate Activity

* The dehydrate activity enables you to explicitly specify a dehydration point.
* This activity acts as a dehydration point to automatically maintain long-running asynchronous processes and their current state information in a database while they wait for asynchronous callbacks.
* Storing the process in a database preserves the process and prevents any loss of state or reliability if a system shuts down or a network problem occurs.
* This feature increases both BPEL process reliability and scalability.

Email Activity

* This activity enables you to send an email notification about an event.

Empty Activity

* Inserts a no-operation instruction into a process.

Exit Activity

* Immediately end all currently running activities on all parallel branches without involving any termination handling, fault handling, or compensation handling mechanisms.

Flow Activity

* Specify one or more activities to be performed concurrently.
* A flow activity completes when all activities in the flow have finished processing (or skipped).

FlowN Activity

* Create multiple flows equal to the value of N, which is defined at run time based on the data available and logic within the process.
* An index variable increments each time a new branch is created, until the index variable reaches the value of N.
* Replaced by the forEach activity in BPEL 2.0 projects.

forEach Activity

* Process multiple sets of activities sequentially or in parallel.
* forEach activity can only use a scope activity.
* Replaces FlowN activity in BPEL 2.

If Activity

* Define conditional behavior for specific activities to decide between two or more branches.
* This activity replaces the switch activity in BPEL 2.0 projects.

IM Activity

* Send an automatic, asynchronous instant message (IM) notification to a user, group, or destination address.

Invoke Activity

* Specify an operation you want to invoke for the service (identified by its partner link).
* Can be one-way or request-response on a port provided by the service.
* Can also automatically create variables in an invoke activity.
* Can invoke a synchronous web service or initiates an asynchronous web service.

Java Embedding Activity

* Add custom Java code to a BPEL process using the Java BPEL exec extension bpelx:exec.

Partner Link Activity

* Define the external services with which your process interacts.

Phase Activity

* Creates Oracle Mediator and business rules service components for integration with a BPEL process.
* Creates message request input and message response output variables and design business rules for evaluating variable content for the BPEL process.
* When you complete these tasks, the following activities and service components are created:
- Assign activity.
- Invoke activity.
- Mediator partner link.
- Business rules service component.

Pick Activity

* Waits for the occurrence of one event in a set of events and performs the activity associated with that event.
* If multiple events occur, the selection of the activity to perform depends on which event occurred first.

Receive Activity

* Specifies the partner link from which to receive information and the port type and operation for the partner link to invoke.
* This activity waits for an asynchronous callback response message from a service
* The receive activity supports the bpelx:property extensions that facilitate the passing of properties through the SOAP header, and the obtaining of SOA runtime system properties for useful information such as tracking.compositeInstanceId and tracking.conversationId.

Receive Signal Activity

* Use this activity in detail processes to wait for the notification signal from the master process to begin processing.
* Use this activity in a master process to wait for the notification signal from all detail processes indicating that processing has completed.

Remove Entity Activity

* Remove an entity variable.

RepeatUntil Activity

* Use this activity if the body of an activity must be performed at least once.
* The XPath expression condition in the repeatUntil activity is evaluated after the body of the activity completes. The condition is evaluated repeatedly (and the body of the activity processed) until the provided boolean condition is true.
* Supported in BPEL 2 projects only.

Replay Activity

* This activity enables you to re-execute the activities inside a selected scope.

Reply Activity

* This activity allows the process to send a message in reply to a message that was received through a receive activity.
* The combination of a receive activity and a reply activity forms a request-response operation on the WSDL port type for the process.

Rethrow Activity

* This activity enables you to rethrow a fault originally captured by the immediately enclosing fault handler.
* Supported in BPEL 2 projects only.

Scope Activity

* This activity consists of a collection of nested activities that can have their own local variables, fault handlers, compensation handlers, and so on.
* A scope activity is analogous to a { } block in a programming language.
* Each scope has a primary activity that defines its behavior. The primary activity can be a complex structured activity, with many nested activities within it to arbitrary depth. The scope is shared by all the nested activities.

Sequence Activity

* Define a collection of activities (synchronous preferred) to be performed in sequential order.

Signal Activity

* Used in a master process to notify detail processes to perform processing at runtime and used in detail processes to notify a master process that processing has completed.

SMS Activity

* This activity enables you to send a short message system (SMS) notification about an event.

Switch Activity

* This activity consists of an ordered list of one or more conditional branches defined in a case branch, followed optionally by an otherwise branch.
* The branches are considered in the order in which they appear.
- The first branch whose condition is true is taken and provides the activity performed for the switch.
- If no branch with a condition is taken, then the otherwise branch is taken.
- If the otherwise branch is not explicitly specified, then an otherwise branch with an empty activity is assumed to be available.
* The switch activity is complete when the activity of the selected branch completes.

Terminate Activity

* End the tasks of an activity
* This activity is replaced by the exit activity in BPEL 2.0 projects.

Throw Activity

* Generates a fault from inside the business process.

Transform Activity

* This activity enables you to create a transformation that maps source elements to target elements.

User Notification Activity

* Placeholder to send notification.
* Notification channel defined by the end user in the User Messaging Preferences user interface of the Oracle User Messaging Service.
* Defaults to email.

Validate Activity

* Validate variables in the list against their XML schema.

Voice Activity

* This activity enables you to send a telephone voice notification about an event.

Wait Activity

* This activity allows a process to specify a delay for a certain period or until a certain deadline is reached.
* A typical use of this activity is to invoke an operation at a certain time.
* This activity enables you to wait for a given time period or until a certain time has passed.
* Exactly one of the expiration criteria must be specified.

While Activity

* This activity supports repeated performance of a specified iterative activity.
* The iterative activity is repeated until the given while condition is no longer true.

Common Activity Tabs

* Annotations tab.
* Assertion tab:
- Executed upon receipt of a callback message of a request/response operation.
- Asserted upon an XPath expression.
- Throws BPEL fault when assertion fails.
- Provides an alternative to using a potentially large number of switch, assign, and throw activities after a partner callback.
* Correlation tab: A set of correlation tokens is defined as a set of properties shared by all messages in the correlated group.
* Documentation tab.
* Headers tab.
* Properties tab.
* Skip condition tab:
- Displays in most activities
- Enables you to specify an XPath expression that, when evaluated to true, causes the activity to be skipped.
- This extension provides an alternative to the case pattern of a switch activity that you use to make an activity conditional.
* Source and targets tab.
- Enables you to synchronize the execution of activities within a flow activity to ensure that a target activity only executes after a source activity have completed.
* Timeout tab.
- Displays in receive activities.
- Provides a timeout setting for request-response operations.
- This provides an alternative to the onMessage and onAlarm branches of a pick activity that you must use when you want to specify a time out duration for partner callbacks.