Service-oriented modeling for e-business applications components

The emerging trends for e-business engineering revolve around specialisation and cooperation. Successful companies focus on their core competences, and rely on a network of business partners for the support services required to compose a comprehensive offer for their customers. Modulariy is crucial for a flexible e-business infrastructure, but related requirements seldom reflect on the design and operational models of business information systems. Software components are widely used for the implementation of e-business applications, with proved benefits in terms of system development and maintenance. We propose a service-oriented componentisation of ebusiness systems as a way to close the gap with the business models they support. Blurring the distinction between external services and internal capabilities, we propose a homogeneous model for the definition of ebusiness applications components. After a brief discussion on the foundational aspects of the approach, we present the process-based technique we adopted for component modelling. We then present an infrastructure compliant with the model proposed that we built on top of an EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) platform