Reply and reply fault activities

Chapter 17 Working with WS-BPEL 2.0

Reply and reply fault activities

A reply activity defines how the business process sends a message in reply to a message that was received by an inbound message activity (IMA), which can be <receive>, <onMessage>, or <onEvent>. The reply activity supports the concept of implicit assignments using the element <toParts>.

The reply activity can take two potential forms:

First, in a normal response, the faultName attribute is not used and the variable attribute (or its equivalent <toPart> elements), when present, will indicate a variable with the response message
Second, when the response indicates a fault, the faultName attribute is used and the variable attribute (or its equivalent <toPart> elements), when present, will indicate a variable for the corresponding fault

Syntax

<reply name="ReplyToCustomer" partnerLink="Customer" portType="PurchaseOrderPT" operation="ReceiveOrder">
  <correlations>
     <correlation set="OrderKey" initiate="no"/>
  </correlations>
   <toParts>
      <toPart part="CustID" fromVariable="vOrderProcessRequest" />
   </toParts>
</reply>

Mapping

You design a reply activity in any of the following ways:

Process object with the following properties:

Process property	Value
Implementation type	Execute operation
Action type	Reply
Implemented by	Operation defined under a service provider within the same model
Received message	Output message of the operation
Message mapping	New variable with a message type

Right-click an <<empty>> process or a process without any stereotype and select the Change to Reply command
Drag the operation from the Browser and drop it on a process in the diagram window then set the appropriate action type

You design a reply with fault activity in the same way as you design a reply activity. However, the action type of the process must be "reply fault" and the Sent message designs the fault message defined under the WSDL operation.

Change to Reply Fault
You can right-click an <<empty>> process and select the Change to Reply Fault command.

Extended attributes

The following extended attribute apply to the reply activity and the reply fault activity and is available from their property sheet:

Name	Internal code	Description
Initiate correlation	InitiateCorrelation	When a correlation is used by the reply activity the initiate attribute can be yes, no or join
Join Condition	joinCondition	Join condition
Suppress Join Failure	suppressJoinFailure	Avoids propagation of Join Failure exceptions
—	MultipleCorrelation	Defines BPEL Invoke, Receive or Reply activities using several correlations.
—	expressionLanguage	Specifies the expression language used in expressions