Abstract

In 2005 four German universities created a research program to improve and standardize its administration processes. Therefore, reams of processes have been analyzed and core functions identified. Automatable core functions have been afterwards implemented as webservices using the Service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm. For reasons of reuse these web-services have been documented using a service catalogue. However, a real advantage of SOA does not evolve until complex business services become configurable on business level. Thereby, the problem arises to make the meaning of the services understandable to non-IT employees, like business analysts. In this paper, we introduce a framework for building up a service catalogue addressing business analysts instead of IT engineers. Therefore, we discuss the composition of webservices to more complex business components. These components are described on an ITlevel addressing the catalogue manager, but contain also non-formal information for business analysts. Thus, the redesign of the universities processes can be supported now, using web-services encapsulated by business components. Our findings can help to increase the usage and acceptance of web-services on a business process level.

Share

COinS