Oracle SOA BPEL Designer

Oracle BPEL Process Manager provides support for two types of BPEL designer environments for graphically designing BPEL processes:

JDeveloper BPEL Designer
Eclipse BPEL Designer

You design BPEL processes by dragging and dropping elements (known as activities) into the process and editing their property pages. This eliminates the need to write BPEL code. You integrate BPEL processes with external services (known as partner links). You also use wizards to integrate adapters and services such as workflows, transformations, notifications, sensors, and worklist task management with the process. Both BPEL designers can deploy the developed processes directly to Oracle BPEL Console. This facilitates the development and maintenance of BPEL processes. 

1.3.1 JDeveloper BPEL Designer

JDeveloper BPEL Designer is integrated with Oracle JDeveloper. Oracle JDeveloper is an integrated development environment (IDE) for building applications and Web services using Java, XML, and SQL standards. Oracle JDeveloper supports the entire development life cycle with integrated features for designing, coding, debugging, testing, profiling, tuning, and deploying applications. A visual and declarative development approach and the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) work together to simplify application development and reduce coding tasks.

JDeveloper BPEL Designer uses BPEL as its native format. This means that processes built with JDeveloper BPEL Designer are 100% portable. JDeveloper BPEL Designer also enables you to view and modify the BPEL source without decreasing the usefulness of the tool.

Oracle BPEL Process Manager provides support for the following services and adapters in JDeveloper BPEL Designer:

Transformations, workflows, worklists, notifications, and sensors

Technology adapters (file, FTP, database, AQ, JMS, and Oracle Applications)

1.3.2 Eclipse BPEL Designer

Eclipse BPEL Designer is integrated with the Eclipse platform. Eclipse is designed for building integrated development environments (IDEs) to create applications such as Web sites, embedded Java programs, C++ programs, and Enterprise JavaBeans. Eclipse provides you with mechanisms to use and rules to follow that lead to seamlessly integrated tools. These mechanisms are exposed through API interfaces, classes, and methods. Eclipse also provides useful building blocks and frameworks that facilitate developing new tools.

Eclipse BPEL Designer is a plug-in for the Eclipse 3.0 platform. Eclipse BPEL Designer uses standard BPEL, meaning that processes you design can be used with other BPEL servers (and vice versa).

The JDeveloper BPEL Designer services and adapters described in "JDeveloper BPEL Designer" are not currently available on Eclipse BPEL Designer.