Extending an open source BPEL engine for multi-tenancy support

Abstract

WS-BPEL is the de-facto standard for orchestrating Web services into business processes. Workflow engines can execute WS-BPEL processes. Furthermore, workflow engines handle the communication with external service partners providing the Web services. One future goal is to achieve tenant-aware Web services and thereby tenant-aware workflow engines to handle Web services. These tenant-aware Web services are specifically configured for the tenants, and the tenant-aware engines are able to configure such a process instance and offer them on a per-tenant basis. This reduces provider costs and efforts. The goal of this diploma thesis is to describe how workflow engines can support multitenancy, especially in the area of communication, and how this is of advantage for providers who offer their services over the Web using such a workflow engine. The providers should be able to offer tenant specific instances of applications on one workflow engine. In this diploma thesis, a concept to extend a workflow engine to handle a tenant context is developed. It is therefore an extension of the workflow engine in the area of communication. The concept is implemented by extending the open source WS-BPEL engine OW2 Orchestra.