| description |
Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), an emerging paradigm for
designing and implementing business collaborations within and across
organisational boundaries, are currently of interest to both
software vendors and scientists. In this paradigm, the functionality
provided by business applications is encapsulated within web
services: software components described at a semantic level, which
can be invoked by application programs or by other services through
a stack of internet standards including HTTP, XML, SOAP, WSDL and
UDDI. Once deployed, web services provided by various organisations
can be interconnected in order to implement business collaborations,
leading to composite web services. Ultimately, these composed
services are there to support business processes. Therefore, the
relationship between business process management, workflow
technology and SOAs is highly relevant. This is illustrated by the
interest in the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) standard.
Therefore, this Special Issue of the International Journal of
Business Process Integration and Management addresses the link
between processes and services. This paper introduces the papers in
this Special Issue and provides an overview of the domain.
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