WebLogic: WLI vs BPEL?

Question

Hi, folks. I would really appreciate to have your help on the following question:

In the last days I've been reading about Oracle's WebLogic, as I'm currently working on a project that uses it. As I've never had contact with WebLogic, I've been doing some research about the infrastructure and learning the pros/cons of using WebLogic Integration (WLI) or using BPEL for process integration purposes.

As far as I've gone, I've learnt that BPEL stands as a "layer" over WLI, exposing services as web services for local or remote invocation. But, objectively, which are the goals of each one of them (WLI and BPEL)?

I would really like to have you helping me to clarify this question, as I would like to know when shall I only use WLI and when should I use BPEL?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

I never used WLI but I'm familiar with BPEL ... that's why I'll just talk about what i know :) ... with BPEL you can compose your business process from others web services you can exchange with them data encapsulated in XML through SOAP protocol ... You can see a BPEL process as a workflow of others web services ... when your composition is done you can expose your business process as a regular web service by his WSDL (interface) ... For me what I hate most in BPEL is his syntax based on XML !!!!! this can be partially compensated by a good visual editor like the free one of NetBeans 6.5.1 (no longer supported in new versions)

EDIT

We can not compare WLI to BPEL because the first is an integration system ... while the second is a language ... BPEL is an orchestration language, as I say before you can see it as a Work-flow of others Web services ... If you want to have the same feature in WLI you can use JPD ... or convert your BPEL file to a JPD ... Maybe the question will be more appropriate if we say :

"What is the difference between JPD & BPEL"