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...WSFL and XLANG

WSFL
- Every activity is a Web Service
- WSFL itself can be seen as a Web Service
- WSFL can be nested
  - Very flexible language to describe work flows
XLANG
- Work flow language used by Microsoft in BizTalk product
BPEL4WS
- IBM, Microsoft and BEA proposed unifying WSFL & XLANG
ebXML and RosettaNet
- A better solution for complex applications?

Notes:

In WSFL every activity is a Web Service and WSFL itself can be seen as a Web Service. WSFL can be nested within another making it a very flexible language to describe work flows.
XLANG is the work flow language used by Microsoft in their BizTalk product.
In a recent announcement by IBM, Microsoft and BEA proposed to unify WSFL and XLANG. The unifying specification is is called BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services). Visit http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-bpel/summary.html for more information.
For complex applications involving many business partners as in EDI a better solution may lie in ebXML and RosettaNet discussed later. These are full featured frameworks that define many functionalities currently missing in Web Services.
(ebXML is a specification to provide EDI using Web Services. RosettaNet is a similar initiative more narrow in scope than ebXML. It is being used mostly in the electronics industry.)