Using event-driven process chains for model-driven development of business applications

Web services provide a standardized way of accessing functionality over networks. Most beneficial is their use if many Web services are composed in order to develop an application. Due to their nature, Web services can be used to support businesses if their composition matches the underlying business processes. However, the activities related to composition as well as design of a corresponding user interface are still time consuming. This is especially true in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) due to their available resources. Therefore, we propose a light-weight concept for model-driven composition by attaching additional attributes to EPCs only. This allows to model the Web service composition as well as the user interaction. In this context model-driven means that developers create models instead of source code. These models are then used to create executable code. In contrast to established approaches complete applications can be modeled with less effort. Therefore, even SMEs who cannot invest heavily into information technology can profit from the advantages of Web service technology.