The following terms apply to correlation:
- Property — A property is an arbitrarily named token. It must be a simple type. It is defined in a WSDL file.
- Property alias — A property alias is a rule that tells the BPEL runtime how to map data from a message into a property value. You can define several property aliases for a property that will be used as a correlation value. You would do this if the same property value needs to be mapped from more than one message, which is typical in correlation. For instance, if two different messages have the same part that you want to extract. Then you need one property and two property aliases - one for each message). Property aliases are defined in a WSDL file.
- Correlation set — A correlation set is a compound key made up of one or more property values, actually it is a property set. The BPEL runtime uses this key to ensure that messages are routed to the right process instance for a particular conversation. A correlation set is defined in a BPEL file.
- Correlations — Correlations mark the activities, identify the correlation sets by name and indicate which correlation sets occur in the messages being sent or received.
- Pattern attribute to indicate whether the correlation applies to the outbound message (request), inbound message (response), or both (request-response).
