This whitepaper analyzes some critical implementation-level problems faced by current BPEL products in real-world implementations. Most of these problems occur because existing process-based integration products do not seamlessly support request/reply and asynchronous data flow within a single framework-a shortcoming that is addressed by ESB implementations based on data-flow, EDA and SCA (Service Component Architecture) concepts.

It is important to note that the problems discussed below apply not only to BPEL-centric platforms but to any integration platform that is based on a process-centric language similar to BPEL. Thus, many existing vendor products (including those from Oracle, WebMethods, TIBCO, IBM, BEA and SAP to name a few) based on older process-languages that precede BPEL also suffer from the problems analyzed in this paper.