Runtime Process Adaptation for BPEL Process Execution Engines

Requirements for business processes can change over time. Adapting a process to meet the changed requirements is not always possible, especially for long running processes, where stopping the execution of process instances might be necessary and/or instance migration or compensation scenarios must be implemented. Adaptations for processes can be described in a generic way using adaptation patterns. Interpreting these adaptation patterns will enable adaptation support at runtime, independently from a specific process execution engine. This paper presents a framework which enables adaptation support for process execution engines. It explains how runtime information of process instances can be monitored by using aspect-oriented programming. A model for adaptation patterns is presented as well as an adaptation engine which interprets instances of the adaptation pattern model and applies the adaptations to running BPEL processes and their instances. The presented adaptation framework is not tied to a specific process execution engine, so any process execution engine can be extended to provide adaptation support.