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BPMN Implementation: Send task, Message throw event

A reply activity sends a message back to a Web service in response to a message received or through fault handling. The received message is in a receive activity, an onMessage handler, an onEvent handler, or an invoke. For a request-response operation, a reply activity has the same partner link and operation as its matching receive, onMessage, or onEvent.

A receive may have multiple reply activities referencing it but only one of them is allowed to execute. For example, there may be a normal reply and a fault-handling reply. Both replies share a partner link and operation with receive, but only one of them is allowed to execute.

For an executable process, a reply activity must specify a variable for the message data being sent.

Required Properties	Optional Properties
Participant (Partner Link)	Name. See Selecting Activity Labels
Operation	Port Type
Variable See Input Variable or toPart fromVariable See From Variable to Part.	Correlation
	Fault Name
	Join Condition. See Creating a Join Condition for an Incoming Link
	Suppress Join Failure. See Process Properties
	Comment. See Adding Comments to a Process
	Documentation. Adding Documentation to a Process
	Setting Visual Properties and Using Your Own Library of Images
	Execution State. See Viewing the Execution State of an Activity or Link
	Message Exchange. See Message Exchange Declaration
	Extension Attributes and Extension Elements. See Declaring Extension Elements and Attributes.

To add a reply activity to the process manually:

For a shortcut and recommended technique, see Creating an Activity by Starting with a WSDL Interface.

Drag a Send task
or Message throw event
to the Process Editor canvas.

You can add a background color to the send task, but not the message throw event.

In the Properties view, select the following values:

Optionally type in a Name.

In the Participant drop-down, select New Process Service Consumer
. See Creating a New Process Service Consumer Interface.

Select an Operation
from the picklist.

In the Data tab, do one of the following:

Select Single Variable from the Assignment Type and select a variable, or select New Variable.

Select XPaths or XQuery. For details, see Input Variable and From Part to Variable.

Select other optional properties as desired.

A simple example of using a reply activity in a process is shown in the following illustration.

To add a reply activity with a fault response:

Add a reply to the catch container.

Select the properties and name, as described in the procedure above.

Select a Fault Name from the list. The fault name is defined in a WSDL file.

Select the fault variable from the Variable list.

The following illustration shows an example of a reply with fault. The fault name is shown in the main tab. The variable is specified in the Data tab.

The following illustration shows a simple example of using a reply with a fault in a catch handler.

XML Syntax

<reply partnerLink="NCName" portType="QName"?
        operation="NCName"
        variable="BPELVariableName"? faultName="QName"?
        messageExchange="NCName"?
        standard-attributes>
  standard-elements
  <correlations>?
     <correlation set="NCName" initiate="yes|join|no"?>+
  </correlations>
  <toParts>?
     <toPart part="NCName" fromVariable="BPELVariableName"/>+
  <toParts>
</reply>

Example 1 Normal Response:

<reply name="reply" partnerLink="customer"
        portType="lns:loanServicePT" operation="request"
        variable="approval">

Example 2 Fault Handling:

<reply name="reply" partnerLink="customer"
        portType="lns:loanServicePT" operation="request"
        variable="error" faultName="unableToHandleRequest">

BPMN Tasks and Events

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