Towards a user-oriented environment for web services composition

Abstract

Current web services composition engines like ActiveBPEL provide only facilities to create static workflow compositions. Once a workflow is deployed and started, the constructs that represent the workflow cannot be altered subsequently. In fact, only administrator could re-define a workflow at any time. We claim, however, that such an admin-based deployment is not sufficient. For future application scenarios, we see a need for adapting workflow compositions in a personalized manner even at runtime of the deployed workflow. According to this idea, regular end-users should be able to adapt a workflow for accommodating new requirements. Based on our review for the component-based tailoring methods, the paper presents the multi-tier architecture TailorBPEL that supports the tailoring of personalized BPEL-based workflow compositions. We believe that such architecture is significant for having highly flexible and adaptable service-oriented architectures that are considered for the adoption to user-centric application scenarios.