Using Oracle BPEL Direct Bindings in Java by Mark Peterson

This blog contains best practices for interfacing Java to external systems through Oracle BPEL components. Java will often be used to integrated functionality within the SOA framework since the framework allows wiring of Java code in order to perform various operations during human task assignment, and execution, as an example. And since these Java classes are embedded in the framework, and these classes may need to pull data from databases, Active Directory, REST services, WSDLs, etc., what is the best way to do this? You guess it: Direct Bindings.

Why use direct bindings? First of all, a direct binding creates a simple RMI interface between Java code and a BPEL process. Besides the speed and efficiency one gets from RMI, using direct bindings leverages the capabilities already available within the SOA framework. There’s no need to go outside the SOA framework to get assignment data (in this example) from a database or other data source. Using SOA libraries, BPEL and SOA adapters everything needed is already available.

Note that our use case has to do with implementing a very specialized version of role or parameter-based team assignments. Another assignment strategy is give here for creating parametric roles using business rules. However there are many other use cases that can be applied that don’t have to do with assignments at all. Dynamic Bindings can and should be used whenever you want to interact with BPEL code from within Java.

Design by Interface First

The first step is to create an interface that will be used between the BPEL process and Java code. In this blog we will implement an interface that will be used to return a list of assignments for a given work team. The work team will be determined from the project the team is working on and other project properties such as the work area and activity type. The work team will contain a list of BPM application roles or a particular individual in a role. Read the complete article here.

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