System Architecture with XML
This guide comprehensively combines XML, the Internet, equalling Web services, which provide a great deal of strategic applications for your business.
TABLE OF CONTENTS System Architecture with XML
Chapter 5: Modeling Processes
Why bother dealing with business processes in this book at all? Since XML could be looked at as being a technological basis for integration within the IT domain, we definitely have to take processes into account. We have seen at least two phases in IT: data integration and application integration. Giving the process paradigm appropriate weight, we can observe the phase of integrating processes of manifold kinds in different environments and with arbitrary scope in their business domains.
That is why in this chapter we will give an overview of process modeling, starting with some terminological aspects. We then present workflows as a special perception of processes. From that we will show some problems in the field of process analysis and modeling and present a somewhat uncommon perspective of business processes. These considerations are based on mechanisms that are known from research on cooperative software agents, specifically communication-based interaction, cooperation, and coordination. Finally we give some hints on applying XML technology to process modeling and implementation.
5.1 Concepts of Business Process Modeling
Value creation and interaction
Business processes have proved to be an adequate paradigm in describing value-creating activities within and between enterprises in both the old economy and the new (or Internet) economy. In turn, processes may serve to describe interactions between any participants in Internet platforms (e.g., portals, marketplaces, etc.).
Such interactions refer to business transactions, which encompass the collection and exchange of information, the negotiation of contracts, and the exchange of goods. This is part of what is called...
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