An open, flexible, and configurable system for service composition

Abstract

Most e-services are typically delivered point-to-point; however, the e-service environment creates the opportunity for providing value-added, integrated services, which are delivered by composing existing e-services, possibly offered by different companies. This paper presents eFlow, a model and system that provides a flexible, configurable and open approach to service composition. In fact, eFlow has an adaptive and dynamic process model that allows processes to transparently adapt to changes in the environment, to customize service execution according to the customers' needs, and to cope with exceptional situations. In addition, the model and the system are configurable, so that applications running on devices with limited storage space and computing power can download a version of eFlow that only includes needed features and that has a smaller footprint with respect to the complete version.