Business process integration with web services

Abstract

Web services facilitate the creation of business process solutions in an efficient, standard way. The process solutions development with Web services requires the automation of discovery and composition of Web services. In this paper, we focus on the discovery of Web services based on the capabilities and properties of published services, and the composition of processes based on the requirements of submitted requests. We propose a solution which comprises multiple matching algorithms, first, a micro-level matching algorithm which matches the capabilities of services with activities in a process request, and, second, macro-level matching algorithms which are used to compose a business process by identifying services that satisfy the business requirements and constraints of the request. The solution from the macro-level matching algorithms is optimal in terms of meeting a certain business objective, e.g., minimizing the cost or execution time, or maximizing the total utility value of business properties of interest. © 2005 IEEE.