1. Developing SOA Applications with Oracle SOA Suite
  2. Using the BPEL Process Service Component
  3. Manipulating XML Data in a BPEL Process
  4. Importing Process Definitions in BPEL 2.0

Importing Process Definitions in BPEL 2.0

You can use the import element to specify the definitions on which your BPEL process is dependent. When you create a version 2.0 BPEL process, an import element is added to the .bpel file, as shown in the following example: 

<process name="Loan Flow"
   . . .
   . . .
   <import namespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/SOAApplication/SOAProject/LoanFlow"
     location="LoanFlow.wsdl" importType="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/"/>

You can also use the import element to import a schema without a namespace, as shown in the following example: 

<process name="Loan Flow"
   . . .
   . . .
<import location="xsd/NoNamespaceSchema.xsd"
 importType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"/>

You can also use the import element to import a schema with a namespace, as shown in the following example: 

<process name="Loan Flow"
   . . .
   . . .
<import namespace="http://www.example.org" location="xsd/TestSchema.xsd"
 importType="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"/>

The import element is provided to declare a dependency on external XML schema or WSDL definitions. Any number of import elements can appear as children of the process element. Each import element can contain the following attributes.

  • namespace: Identifies an absolute URI that specifies the imported definitions. This is an optional attribute. If a namespace is specified, then the imported definitions must be in that namespace. If a namespace is not specified, this indicates that external definitions are in use that are not namespace-qualified. The imported definitions must not contain a targetNamespace specification.

  • location: Identifies a URI that specifies the location of a document containing important definitions. This is an optional attribute. This can be a relative URI. If no location attribute is specified, the process uses external definitions. However, there is no statement provided indicating where to locate these definitions.

  • importType: Identifies the document type to import. This must be an absolute URI that specifies the encoding language used in the document. This is a required attribute.

    • If importing XML schema 1.0 documents, this attribute's value must be set to "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema".

    • If importing WSDL 1.1 documents, the value must be set to "http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/". You can also specify other values for this attribute.

For more information, see section 5.4 of the Web Services Business Process Execution Language Specification Version 2.0.