Supporting Telecom Business Processes by means of Workflow Management and Federated Databases

This report addresses the issues related to the use of workflow management systems and federated databases to support business processes that operate on large and heterogeneous collections of autonomous information systems. We discuss how they can enhance the overall IT-architecture. Starting from the OSCA architecture, we develop an architecture that includes workflow management systems and federated databases. In this architecture, the notion of information systems as a monolithic entity disappears. Instead, business processes are supported directly by workflows that combine presentation blocks, function blocks, and data blocks. We address the specific issues of transaction management and change management in such an architecture.