BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) is an XML-based language designed to formally describe business and industrial processes. It enables the orchestration of web services, allowing complex workflows to be composed recursively by dividing tasks between different actors.
As an OASIS standard, a BPEL application is typically invoked as a web service and interacts with the outside world by orchestrating other services. The runtime environment where these processes are executed is known as the BPEL engine.
While BPEL remains a cornerstone of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), modern implementations often favor BPMN 2.0 for its visual representation or microservices orchestration patterns for cloud-native environments.