BPEL patterns for implementing variations in SOA applications

The main purpose of the COVARM research project is to define a candidate reference model utilizing a framework of web services to support a key UK Higher Education business process. Any given business domain may offer a level of complexity such that process activities, terminology (the ontology) and business rules may vary between organizations belonging to same domain While a generic process can and has been built as part of the reference model, the flexibility (or variability) is afforded by the implementation strategy for the canonical model / generic process. We have implemented the following variations: activity ordering, cross-site terminology harmonization, and specific business rules to address the variability requirements. This paper presents our experience with explicitly managing the variability within the implementation technology. With the use of BPEL patterns, we describe how the management of these variations can be dealt with in an SOA application implementation.