"Tibco didn't support 1.1. We actually were holding out for a standardized version of BPEL," McNamara said.

BPEL 2.0, or WS-BPEL, which is the official OASIS acronym, is undergoing a public review period. It could be approved as an official OASIS standard by April 1, an OASIS representative said.

With BPEL 2.0, the use of global variables in Web services calls is no longer required. Global variables added complexity to BPEL because they were visible throughout a system rather than just where they were needed, McNamara said. Examples of variables include a customer processing ID or a response code from a credit check.

Other improvements in BPEL 2.0 include the addition of key looping constructs and extension capabilities to add a user-defined function that was not stipulated in the specification, Tibco said.

BPEL leverages XML to define orchestration of multiple Web services for business processes, said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail. Version 2.0 boosts support for XPath and XSLT. But BPEL is not without its shortcomings, he said.