Mapping Business Workflows onto Network Services Environments

Abstract

In order to implement common adaptability in accessing to distributed resources, it is fatal for Web applications to deploy business workflows onto network service environments composed of Web Services and Grid Services. This paper introduces abstract resources and abstract services to express abstract workflows, and uses resources and service instances to express executable workflows that can run in service environments. Thus the deployment and execution of business workflows are transformed into two mappings: mapping of business workflow onto abstract workflows and mapping of abstract workflows onto executable workflows. The definition of relevant parameters used to implement automatic mapping is formulized as Application Template (AT). The most important component of AT is corresponding relation between business functions and abstract workflow fragments. AT also defines restrictions while each abstract services are utilized in certain application tasks, as well as associated service metadata. The latter avoids superfluous metadata by service providers, and simplifies unnecessary details in matching service instances.