An Aspect-Based Process Container for BPEL

In recent years, several WS- * specifications have been pro-posed to address the middleware requirements of web ser-vices such as security, reliable messaging, and transactions. On the other hand side, BPEL is the upcoming standard for composing existing web services into more complex ones. In this paper, we look at the middleware requirements of web service compositions and specifically those specified in BPEL. We argue that the WS- * specifications such as WS-Security and WS-Reliability do not address these require-ments appropriately. We introduce a framework for pro-viding middleware support in BPEL engines based on a process container, which intercepts the execution of BPEL processes and calls dedicated middleware services to plug in support for security, persistence, reliable messaging, etc. The container is implemented as a lightweight container us-ing AO4BPEL aspects and the middleware requirements of the process are specified in a deployment descriptor