Microsoft applies BPEL to Windows Workflow; analysts scratch their heads

Microsoft's Paul Andrew made it official on his blog: Microsoft will be supporting BPEL, Business Process Execution Language, as early as this month. According to Andrew, "in March 2007, Microsoft plans to release a CTP [Community Technology Preview] of a set of BPEL activities for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). This will be called BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation March CTP and the CTP release will implement the BPEL 1.1 specification. The final release of BPEL for Windows Workflow Foundation will implement the OASIS BPEL 2.0 standard and is planned for release in Q4 of calendar year 2007. The download will be separate from the .NET Framework and it will be required for developing BPEL based workflows in Visual Studio." 

The timing seems right. There's now plenty of talk about a convergence taking place between SOA and business process management (BPM), to the point where some industry analysts are looking at the two as a single hybrid category. Microsoft's support of BPEL suggests the category is ripe for mass-market adoption as well, at least in terms of tools.

However, some industry experts are, well, underwhelmed by the Microsoft BPEL announcement. David Chappell, for one, says the announcement is no surprise. Microsoft "has been talking about its intent to do this since WF went public in the fall of 2005. The only real surprise is that it's taken so long."

Chappell, not a fan of BPEL anyway, cautions that "no one should interpret the announcement as an embrace of BPEL-based development by Microsoft." Workflows will still be seen as .NET-based code, not as XML-based BPEL. In addition, he adds, "like BizTalk Server today, WF treats BPEL as a way to move process logic between different workflow engines, not as an executable format." And, as David makes it a point to remind us, WF does not offer BPEL as a development language.

Bottom line: don't expect widespread use of WF's BPEL support, David says. "I very rarely run across organizations that are using BPEL with BizTalk Server today, and I remain skeptical about BPEL ever achieving widespread popularity."

RFG Group's Michael Dortch says we'll have to wait and see, but Microsoft's track record is mixed when it comes to these sort of things. The core question, he says, is "will Microsoft's support for BPEL be sufficient to deliver the business benefits enterprises need and expect? Microsoft Office, an important component of Microsoft's BPM strategy, offers some clues, but not much hope. What Microsoft has done regarding its Open XML Format for files created by Microsoft Office 2007 offers some interoperability, but not the kind of playing-field-leveling parity at least some supporters of truly open industry standards likely expect or desire."

Michael observes that "Microsoft so far only talking about BPEL support as a mechanism for importing and exporting information into and out of Windows WF raises at least as many questions as it answers." For example, what to do about those business process management solutions that come from the non-Microsoft space, and how they'll fit into the overall scheme of things.

Todd Biske also weighs in on WF BPEL, asking, "what’s the big deal?" Sure, he says, business process management tools "have a nice graphical editor where you drag various shapes and connectors around, and they probably have some tree-like view where you draw lines between your input structure and your output structure. At best, you may need to hand code some XPath and some very basic expressions." However, he doesn't envision business users writing BPEL scripts any time soon.

Better that vendors start focusing on the "m" in business process management, Todd points out. "No one should need to see BPEL unless you’re migrating from one engine to another. There shouldn’t be a reason to exchange BPEL between partners, because it’s an execution language."

Only process execution metrics should be visible, he says. "I’d much rather see all of the vendors announcing support for BPEL begin announcing support for some standard way of externalizing the metrics associated with process execution for aunified business process management view of what’s occurring, regardless of the platforms where everything is running, or how many firewalls need to be traversed."