BPEL and Content DB's performance issue

Question

Hello,
We are using an integration between BPEL and ContentDB, we do have a workflow configuration set on a particular folder where a workflow is triggered on the "Create" event. When BPEL does receive this event, a webservice is called afterwards. This webservice involves a call against the ContentDB API (for instance, we create an upload operation).
Everything is fine when a few documents are handled, but the system fails when more than 100 documents are created.
We figured out that instead of having one instance of the workflow running, we are actually having 100 instances of the workflow running concurrently...
So we thought that tuning the application tier would have resolved the issue. But we are still stucked because we hit system limitations (OC4J_CONTENT jvm Xmax sizing increased from 256 to 512 Mo)
Is there a way to setup contentdb to make it triggers WF operation progressively (using ramp up or queueing ?).
Cheers,

Answer 1

Assuming your BPEL processes are connecting to Content DB using Java exec call-out blocks, you could have some of common FDK (ManagersFactory) Web Service session pool - and essentially block until a session is released/made available. This would throttle the incoming load from BPEL on the OC4J_Content instance.
-Matt.