Bizbuilder - An E-services framework targeted for internet workflow

One of the fundamental requirements for solutions to succeed in the business-to-business e-commerce domain is the ability to integrate seamlessly or inter-operate with diverse systems. In other words, the services offered by a business should be easily accessible by any consumer or business using the Internet infrastructure and standard protocols. A framework is needed by which new E-services can be created, or existing non-Internet services can be converted to E-services. Also, since these E-services are good candidates to be part of business workflows, a facility is needed to make them support and participate in such workflows. This paper describes BizBuilder, our E-services framework used to create these E-services. BizBuilder addresses the issue of transactions in particular and facilitates managing both synchronous and longrunning E-services that can participate in workflows. Additionally, BizBuilder provides suitable support to register E-services to a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) enabled brokering community. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2001