BPEL is not the only way to support BPMN, but it’s the best way, for the very many reasons that have been outlined on this blog. It’s also the only standard way I can think of, from the viewpoint of a standard execution language for processes.

Best regards
 -Ismael

Since I’ve seen perfectly good running processes, on systems that don’t use a BPEL engine under the hood, but which execute a BPMN model… I guess I’m not seeing the connection that for BPMN to work right, it has to be BPEL. I’ve even seen such solutions scale to a tremendous degree.

I’m not saying BPEL isn’t valuable, I just don’t buy that it is the only answer. It is an answer, it has a spec/standard, and it has a few implementations. That’s all well and good. But it doesn’t mean that someone can’t come up with another answer…

As an example, think of all the programming languages that also support Java VM implementations of that language (meaning, the language compiles into Java bytecode equivalent and runs inside a JVM). The language cares not that it is being run by JVM bytecode vs. run by native compiler. Even the person writing the code may not care. I think BPMN is similar — I don’t care so much about what is executing it so long as it is a “good” execution of my model. And I might choose a “native” compilation or a “BPEL” compilation or a ABCD compilation (whatever the next standard is).

I think you guys have done a great job with the software, and the evangelism, but I’m not convinced by your arguments and others that BPEL is the only way to implement BPMN.