Abstract:
Business processes in the global environment increasingly encompass multiple partners and complex, rapidly
changing requirements. In this context it is critical that strategic business objectives align with and map accurately
to systems that support flexible and dynamic business processes. To support the demanding requirements
of global business processes, we propose a comprehensive, unifying 4 X 4 Semantic Model that uses Semantic
Templates to link four tiers of implementation with four types of semantics. The four tiers are the Business
Process Tier, the Workflow Enactment Tier, the Partner Services Tier, and the Middleware Services Tier. The
four types of semantics are Data Semantics, Function Semantics, Nonfunctional Semantics, and Execution
Semantics. Our model encompasses services architectures that include enterprise class WSDL-based Web
services as well as the lightweight but broadly used REST-based services.