Workflows over Workflows:Practical Experiences with the Integration of SAP R/3 Business Workflows in WISE

Authors
Christoph Schuler, Heiko Schuldt, Hans-Jörg Schek
Type
In Proceedings
Date
1999/10
Appears in
Tagungsband des Informatik'99-Workshops „Enterprise-wide and Cross-enterprise Workflow Management:Co
Location
Paderborn, Germany
Abstract
Business processes within companies are in general well established and supported by commercially available workflow management systems. However, when processes span multiple companies (such as, for instance, in the case of virtual enterprises or in business to business electronic commerce), software support quite is limited. In such cases, processes need to be implemented on top of already existing systems. The WISE project addresses this problem and provides adequate infrastructure to support the whole life-cycle of virtual enterprise processes, including the integration of legacy systems, especially of workflow management systems. In this paper, we describe our experience with the integration of SAP R/3 Business Workflows into WISE. In addition, and since an important characteristics of the WISE system is the enactment of processes with execution guarantees, we also discuss the provision of execution guarantees when external systems like SAP R/3 Business Workflows are involved.
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