DISCOBOLE: A service architecture for interconnecting workflow processes Karim Baı ¨na a , Khalid Benali b, * , Claude Godart b a ENSIAS, Universite ´ Mohammed V, Souissi, BP 713 Agdal, Rabat, Morocco b LORIA–INRIA–CNRS (UMR 7503), BP 239, F-54506 Vandoeuvre-le `s-Nancy Cedex, France Accepted 27 April 2006 Available online 18 July 2006 Abstract Process interconnection mechanisms are necessary to coordinate geographically distributed business processes in order to strength awareness inside virtual enterprises, to facilitate multinational e-transactions, etc. Actually, existing business process modelling and enactment systems (workflow systems, project management tools, shared agendas, to do lists, etc.) have been mainly developed to suit enterprise internal needs. Thus, most of these systems are not adapted to inter-enterprise cooperation. As we are interested in workflow processes, we aim, through this paper, to present a model supporting dynamic heterogeneous workflow process interconnection. We consider the interconnection of enterprise workflow processes as the management of a ‘‘workflow of workflows’’ in which several heterogeneous workflow systems coexist. This paper introduces our process interconnection model, its implementation, and its validation through experimentation. # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Business processes; Workflow systems; Negotiation; Workflow integration; Workflow interconnexion; Service Oriented Architecture 1. Introduction Our aim is to provide an architecture to support dynamic interconnection of enterprise workflow processes. By inter- connection of enterprise workflow processes, we mean the management of a ‘‘workflow of workflows’’ in which several heterogeneous workflow management systems coexist. By dynamics of enterprise workflow process interconnection, we mean that process interconnection does consider neither predetermined communication primitives, nor scheduled points of rendezvous. In other terms, an enterprise, aiming to interconnect its workflow process with another organisation workflow process has to discover and co-decide an inter- connection contract at run-time. To be interconnected with other processes, a workflow process out-sources dynamically parts of it to the other workflow processes. This enables interactions resulting from workflow interconnection to be limited in the time (i.e. to the out-sourcing period) and then to be well managed and controlled. Our process service interconnection model contribution consists of enriching SOA (service oriented approach) with new paradigms and applying this enhanced approach to resolve heterogeneous workflow process interconnection problem. We propose a generic model for workflow process interconnection problem and validate this model on heterogeneous workflow manage- ment systems. Our paper is structured as follows. After a short introduction, Section 2 presents the process interconnection problematic, and the state of the art, Section 3 formalises our process service interconnection model, Section 4 presents an implementation of our model, and gives some hints on our system experimentation. Finally, a short conclusion ends this paper. 2. Process interconnection Due to business process automation development, process interconnection becomes an important matter. Although a wide spectrum of tools for business process modelling and enactment exists (workflow systems, project management tools, shared agendas, to do lists, etc.), they have been developed to suit the intern needs of enterprises, and thus, are not adapted to inter- enterprise interconnection. Compared to other enterprise www.elsevier.com/locate/compind Computers in Industry 57 (2006) 768–777 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: baina@ensias.ma (K. Baı ¨na), benali@loria.fr (K. Benali), godart@loria.fr (C. Godart). 0166-3615/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compind.2006.04.018