question about auto generating WSDL from BPEL definition

[sam wang-2]

Dear friends,

When I actually try to make a BPEL file/definition and execute it, I found an interesting
question. There seems a top level wrapper client web service to invoke/instantiate the BPEL
process (It is called "client PartnerLink" by Oracle BPEL). The BPEL process will receive from and
reply to this wrapper client web service. This wrapper client web service represents the BPEL
process, e.g, the client web service actually is the BPEL process since BPEL process itself is a
standard web service.

My question is if there is a way to automatically generate this wrapper client web service from
the BPEL file? I tried several BPEL editors including NetBeans, Eclipse BPEL, ActiveBPEL and
Oracle BPEL. None of them can automatically generate this wrapper client web service. Besides, it
seems that the common BPEL development approach is first make the WSDL representing the BPEL
process, which will be the wrapper client web service's WSDL. Then actually implementing the real
BPEL process through BPEL editor.

In my opinion, it seems not very difficult to automatically generate this client WSDL from the
BPEL definition. Basically, there are three things to specify in this client WSDL: (1). operation
name. (2) input message. (3) output message. The operation name can be arbitrary. The input
message will correspond to the first "receive" activity in the BPEL definition. The output message
will correspond to the last "reply" activity. (If the first element after "start" is a "flow", and
each branch has a "receive" with instantiate=yes", then the WSDL input will include several parts,
each part corresponds to a branch's "receive". Similar handling for multip "reply" activities.)
Please correct me if I miss something here or anything wrong in my understanding.

The reason why I want to automatically generate this client WSDL from the BPEL definition is that
it will be hard for non-cs users to manually generate this WSDL, while supposely the BPEL editor
is simpler enough for them to generate the BPEL definition. Besides, this client WSDL will change
according to the definition of BPEL, it will be much better/convenient for the user to
automatically generate the client WSDL from the BPEL definition.

By the way, could anyone let me know if NetBeans BPEL model provides WSDL API to process this
client WSDL file? and how?

Any hint/suggestions will be great appreciated!
Sam



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