Introduction - Business and Scientific Workflows - page 1

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

W

ith the emergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA), Web
services are gainingmomentumas key elements in enterprise information
systems. Meanwhile, building business and scientific workflows using
service composition has become an important method for system inte-
gration and process reengineering. Therefore, workflow-driven service
composition is now a hot topic in both academia and industry. This topic
focuses on how to design, analyze, and deploy Web service-based
workflows for business, scientific, andmedical applications. This chapter
discusses the state of the art in both technologies, that is,Web services and
workflow management, with a focus on their impact on each other.

1.1 BACKGROUND ANDMOTIVATIONS

1.1.1 Web Service and Service-Oriented Architecture

In a 1996 report, Schulte and Natis of Gartner Inc. first used the term
service-oriented architecture (SOA) to describe a style of multitier
computing that helped organizations share logic and data among
multiple applications and usage modes [1].
Thomas Erl, who is recognized as a major contributor in the area of
SOA, describes it as an architecture that is open, agile, extensible,
federated, and composable—one that is composed of autonomous,
QoS-capable, vendor diverse, interoperable, discoverable, and