A Web services-based framework for business integration solutions

Developing e-business applications more efficiently and reliably is a critical challenge for many enterprises since existing approaches are characteristically complex and costly. Web services have been gaining popularity with simpler service-oriented architectures and the potential for lower development costs. In this paper, we propose a service composition framework to support a Web services-based approach for developing business integration solutions. By examining the architectural models of Web services and the structural patterns of e-business applications, we argue that our proposed framework enables the composition of pre-defined canonical Web services for developing business integration solutions more efficiently and reliably than existing approaches. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.