Une approche basée SOA pour l'inteconnexion de workflows : application au « transfert de cas »

Workflow and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) favor collaboration among business partners and promote the development of flexible and efficient collaborative applications. This paper proposes an approach to connect workflows of several partners using services for modeling inter-organizational processes particularly built according to a “case transfer” form of cooperation. The "case transfer" defines a form of cooperation in IOWF, particularly prevalent in B2B relationships involving a range of partners with common business goals, exercising the same business and aiming to satisfy many potential customers. The advantage of using services is to obtain process models flexible enough in order to allow easier adaptation in case of new business needs, because services are loosely coupled components. The approach is supported by a process meta-model which combines workflow concepts and SOA concepts. MOTS CLES : processus inter-organisationnel, workflow, service web, SOA, méta-modèle de processus.