Matchmaking for business processes based on conjunctive finite state automata

Abstract

Web services have a potential to enhance B2B e-commerce over the internet by allowing companies and organisations to publish their business processes on service directories where potential trading partners can find them. This can give rise to new business paradigms based on ad-hoc trading relations as companies, particularly small to medium scale, can cheaply and flexibly enter into fruitful contracts, e.g., through subcontracting from big companies. More business process support by the web service infrastructure is however needed before such a paradigm change can materialise. The current infrastructure does not provide sufficient support for searching and matching business processes. We believe that such a service is needed and will enable companies and organisations to establish ad-hoc business relations without relying on manually negotiated frame contracts like RosettaNet PIPs. This paper gives a formal semantics to business process matchmaking and an operational description for matchmaking.