Exploiting Semantics of Inter-Process Dependencies to Instantiate Predefined Integration Patterns

The integration of behaviour has long been a major goal for research into information systems integration. Its greater complexity compared to the well understood integration of structure means that it must be considered from a highly abstract (conceptual) level so the person responsible for the integration can focus on the integration rather than on implementation details. This paper extends previous work which defined ways to identify correspondences between processes and offered integration patterns arising from these correspondences. It investigates the integration of heterogeneous activity specifications and addresses the problem of defining activity specifications in the integrated process. As a result, the user can instantiate the integration patterns automatically and need not to deal with parameter bindings.