Difference of Camunda and BPEL

Question

What's the difference between Camunda and BPEL (Business Process Expression Language) and Where do we use Camunda and where do we use BPEL and which one is better?

I found this question, but BPMN != Camunda. So where is the difference between Camunda and BPEL?

Answer 1

Please see Jan's comment. The thread you already found is already good. You need to compare the two modelling standards, not an engine product and a standard.

BPEL was popular in SOA times, for service orchestration in full automated processes. BPEL can be excuted by a BPEL engine. There are different products offering this capability.

Early plans to be able to map BPMN 1.0 (Notation only, no model) mostly failed. This was one motivation for BPMN 2.0, which also standardases the model, not only the notation. Due to its block orientation and lack of support for human tasks BPEL did not cover all BPM/Workflow requirements. I would say BPEL is dying if not already dead. I would not spend time on it today. Of course that is a personal, biased opinion.

BPMN 2.0 on the other hand is a mature OMG standard, stable since 2014, works for a variety of process management and automation needs and has a wide and growing adoption.

Camunda offers process engine products, which interpret and execute process models based on the BPMN 2.0 standard. There are other product, which also use this modelling standard. engine specific attributes for process automation beyond the standard may differ between vendors. It depends on how closely the vendors are implementing the standard. See for instance https://www.omgwiki.org/bpmn-miwg/doku.php

Answer 2

BPMN is a process notation standard, ie. its great to visually create a business process that models activities and high level transitions BUT its not possible to run/instantiate it because it lacks the underlying data modelling capability that is required to execute any meaningful program.

BPEL on the other hand contains both process activitity/task modelling and data modelling capability hence it can be "executed". (WSDL's allow for the data to be modelled)

Camunda on the other hand is a process orchestration framework that is trying to comply with the BPMN standard. But its hard because BPMN by default does not let you model data.