I am excited about BPEL’s proliferation. But for some organizations (specifically, IT shops), BPEL is being used in areas it is simple not well-suited. For example, some places where IT has gotten ahead of the business, it is used as a process modeling tool. True, BPEL “represents” a process, it is my opinion that proper business modeling tools be used prior to orchestration being defined in BPEL.

Another scenario I continue to find is that people are using BPEL for just about every piece of logic that goes into a business process being executed. The fact is, BPEL does very well at integrating with other services where complex — and more importantly, “fast-changing” — logic is executed. So, my advise is to not throw away every other tool in the belt in the face of BPEL. Fast-changing decisions are better handled outside of BPEL, especially as you consider the deployment process for BPEL, and most especially if you have long-running processes. Business rules engines, databases, and external services that perform specific logic/functions should continue to be leveraged in these cases. I’d be interested in hearing from others who are concerned about this challenge or maybe have already faced it.

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