WSFL

Web Services Flow Language

The Web Services Flow Language (WSFL) is an XML language for the description of Web Services compositions. WSFL considers two types of Web Services compositions:

• The first type specifies the appropriate usage pattern of a collection of Web Services, in such a way that the resulting composition describes how to achieve a particular business goal; typically, the result is a description of a business process
• The second type specifies the interaction pattern of a collection of Web Services; in this case, the result is a description of the overall partner interactions

References

• F.Leymann: Web Services Flow Language (WSFL 1.0)
• Technology Report: Web Services Flow Language (WSFL)

Remarks

• WSFL flow model �describes the orchestration of the various activities in the workflow.
• The global model �describes how these activities are implemented by the services (WSDL)
• Service providers can be located in a number of ways (static, local, uddi)

• �Exporting individual activities as part of the workflow
• Recursive composition of web services

• Inadequate p2p communication mechanism between services (due to the response and notification in WSDL; workflow engine has to mediate every step and can be a bottleneck)
• Simplistic lifecycle management for the services
• No implementation available