variable initilalization in bpel

while using openEsb, variable initilialization is not a problem, since i think openEsb has an extention for this..

however, during ode migration, i get javax.xml.ws.soap.SOAPFaultException: axis2ns1:selectionFailure errors from some of my processes..

i must say, i think variable initialization is the most annoying part of developing bpel processes..

so, i decided to note down some basics about that:

an explanation from http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@ode.apache.org/msg03470.html

ODE doesn't support variable initialization yet. See here:

http://ode.apache.org/ws-bpel-20-specification-compliance.html

The only way to initialize a message variable is through a copy operation within an assign activity.

You can initialize all of the parts of a message at once if you are copying from another message variable of the same message type.

If you are copying from an expression, literal, or other variable type then you need to specify the message part in the to specification.

from http://old.nabble.com/When-we-need-to-initialize-a-variable-td24403747.html

Variables need to be initialized before they are assigned from or when
assigned to using a query or an expression or if they are used as to
input to an invoke or in conditional expressions.

If you are just assigning directly to a variable's message part with no query then no
initialization is needed.