A distributed repository for managing business process models in cross-organizational collaborations

Abstract

Cross-organizational collaborations require the management of models for: collaborative business processes (CBPs), which define the collaboration's behavior; and integration business processes (IBPs), which define the behavior that supports the role an organization performs in a CBP. Managing these business process models becomes a complex task when organizations integrate collaborative networks and set up several cross-organizational collaborations. This paper presents a distributed repository that provides the functionalities required to manage conceptual business process models involved in cross-organizational collaborations. A service-oriented architecture is proposed for the distributed repository. This architecture enables organizations to access a global repository for managing collaborative networks, cross-organizational collaborations, and their CBP models. Organizations can also maintain local repositories of IBP models, which are synchronized and consistent with CBP models, while preserving their private aspects. By using verification methods and a model-driven architecture method, the distributed repository provides services that support the synchronization, consistency and interoperability requirements for CBP and IBP models. A case study is presented along with an implementation of the distributed repository.