A posting from Sanjiva Weerawarana announces the release of a BPEL4WS engine and editor from IBM alphaWorks. BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services) is one of three Web Services specifications recently released by Microsoft, IBM and BEA. BPEL4WS is "an XML-based flow language that defines how business processes interact. This interaction can involve processes contained within or between enterprises. It allows companies to describe complex business processes that can span multiple companies, such as order processing, lead management and claims handling. These business processes can use partner-provided Web services, and can also be offered as Web services business process functions internally or to partners in a reliable and dependable way." The IBM BPEL4WS Java Run Time (BPWS4J) "includes a platform upon which business processes written using the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) can be executed, a set of samples demonstrating the use of BPEL4WS, and a tool that validates BPEL4WS documents. The BPWS4J Engine is an all-Java implementation of BPEL4WS that runs in a servlet container; the BPWS4J Editor is an Eclipse plugin that can be used with Eclipse v2.0+."

From the annoumcement: "As a follow-up to the BPEL4WS specification that was released today by IBM, Microsoft and BEA, we have also developed an implementation of BPEL4WS called BPWS4J. It is available immediately. BPWS4J consists of two parts: an engine and an editor. The BPWS4J Engine is an all-Java implementation of BPEL4WS that runs in a servlet container. The BPWS4J Editor is an Eclipse plugin that can be used with Eclipse v2.0+. BPWS4J was developed by the Component Systems Group at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center. The members of the group are: Francisco (Paco) Curbera, Matthew J. Duftler, Rania Khalaf, Nirmal Mukhi, William A. Nagy, and Sanjiva Weerawarana. Paco and Sanjiva are co-authors of the BPEL4WS specification."

From the BPWS4J website description: "The BPWS4J platform includes an Eclipse plug-in that provides a simple editor for creating and modifying BPEL4WS files. Its main features are as follows: (1) Synchronized XML source and tree views of the business process being created; (2) Flexibility for accomodating bottom-up as well as top-down approaches to process design; (3) Context-sensitive menus that facilitate creation of specification-compliant processes; (4) Validation of process against specification requirements during editing session... For each process, the BPWS4J engine takes in a BPEL4WS document that describes the process to be executed, a WSDL document (without binding information) that describes the interface that the process will present to clients (partners in BPEL4WS terms), and WSDL documents that describe the services that the process may or will invoke during its execution. From this information, the process is made available as a Web service with a SOAP interface. A WSDL file that describes the process's interface may be retrieved from the run-time. The BPWS4J engine supports the invocation, from within the process, of Web services that have a SOAP interface, that are EJBs, or that are normal Java classes."