Chapter 9 Building an Executable BPM: Managing Data and Choreography

Defining Conditional Branching

There are two conditional branching instructions in BPEL4WS:

The switch activity is a complex activity. It selects and executes one activity set based on the evaluation of one or more conditions
The pick activity specifies a whole set of messages that can be received from the same or different partners. Whenever one of the specified messages is received, the Pick activity is completed, and processing of the business process continues. Additionally, one may specify that processing should continue if no message is received in a given time. All conditions on the outgoing flows must be of the same kind (Exception or Event).

You define conditional branching instructions by selecting the appropriate stereotype in the decision object.

For more information about decisions, see section Defining decisions in chapter Building an Analysis BPM.