Facilitating Business Process Management with Harmonized Messaging1

Process communication is characterized by complex interactions between heterogeneous and autonomous systems within the enterprise and often between trading partners. An overwhelming number of initiatives and proposals are underway to provide solutions for process specification and communication. However, the focus is often on defining APIs and interfaces rather than the semantics of the underlying message exchange. We see a great potential in the enhancement of current messaging infrastructure, in its new role in facilitating complex, long running interactions for dynamic and collaborative processes operating in decentralized environments like the web. In this paper, we primarily present a vision for a technology aimed at providing a level of harmonization to multiple messages to form a single custom definable backbone. We will provide the foundation framework for the harmonized messaging technology and identify fundamental issues for the specification of such complex interactions. 1 This work is part of a project jointly funded by the Australian Research Council, SAP Corporate Research and The University of Queensland