Interoperable Transactions in Business Models: A Structured Approach

Recent database research has given much attention to the specification of "flexible" transactions that can be used in interoperable systems. Starting from a quite different angle, Business Process Modelling has approached the area of communication modelling as well (the Language/Action perspective). The main goal of this paper is to provide some useful structuring mechanisms for interoperable transactions based on the Language/Action perspective. The paper thus tries to build a bridge between two rather separated worlds: the research on interoperable transactions on the one hand, and the research on business process models on the other. Extended deontic logic provides the material for this bridge. To better structure the specification, a distinction is proposed between the transaction level, the task level, and the contract.