WS-BPEL 2.0 Beginner's Guide

Empty activities

When developing BPEL processes, for example, in <if> activities, we need to specify an activity for each branch. However, if we do not want to perform any activity for a particular branch, we can specify an <empty> activity. Not specifying any activity in this case would result in an error, because the BPEL process would not correspond to the BPEL schema. Empty activities are also useful in fault handling, when we need to suppress a fault.

The syntax for the <empty> element is rather straightforward:

<empty/>

With this, we have concluded our discussion on loops and conditions.

Pop quiz – conditions and loops

Q1. Which parts of the <if> activity is optional?

1. <if>
2. <elseif>
3. <else>

Q2. Which three types of loops are supported in BPEL?

Q3. Which ...