The semantics of business service orchestration

Abstract

Business services are deliveries of capabilities to consumers. The way such capabilities are selected, combined and delivered makes for the flexibility in services provision compared to, for example, manufacturing of tangible goods. The coordination ('orchestration') of services is an essential requirement for the delivery of more complex services. However, current technologies for web service orchestration assume a procedural 'program-like' approach that as we argue in this paper reduces the flexibility to adapt the composite service in response to changing requirements. This paper proposes that service orchestration should be carried out at the business level, preserving the business semantics and transformed if required to specific orchestration execution models such as BPEL4WS, using MDA techniques. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.