Originally posted by Merrill Higginson:
WebSphere Process Server (WPS) is a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementation. It allows you to create loosely-coupled services that use an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to communicate between them. Quite often WebSphere MQ is used as the ESB.
If you want to get to know WPS from a developer perspective, you really should be looking at the development environment for WPS, which is WebSphere Integration Developer (WID). Below is a URL to a demo which will give a brief introduction as to how to develop applications in WID to deploy to WPS.
http://demos.dfw.ibm.com/on_demand/Demo/IBM_Demo_WebSphere_Integration_Developer-Jan06.html
OK, somewhat officially from IBM --- ummm...No. WebSphere Process Server is certainly a component of a Services Oriented Architecture, but it's not a Services Oriented Architecture implementation. An SOA is something you build, not something you buy.
WPS provides business process choreography (based on the BPEL standard), a Business Rules engine, and also includes as part of it WebSphere Enterprise Services Bus (WESB) which IS an ESB. While WebSphere MQ, which is our premier message-oriented middleware product can be a part of any ESB solution, including one built using WESB, it is not in and of itself an ESB.
Kyle