Service-oriented process configuration systems and/or methods

Abstract

Certain example embodiments described herein relate to techniques for matching business requirements with available services in service-oriented business process systems. An n-to-m relationship between process steps and services may be established. In certain example embodiments, both future design and dynamic runtime changes become possible by elaborating on possible resolution techniques before process execution and by identifying/resolving configurational dependencies. The addition of a service-oriented process configuration layer is made possible in certain example embodiments by enhancing the way that business processes are modeled visually or notationally, and through the implementation of a metamodel. The model linking process steps and services may be extended so as to support logical operators, rules or constraints for matching process steps and services, dependencies and relationships, etc. A meta model may be provided so as to provide support for evaluating or analyzing matches, sometimes automatically, at either or both of runtime and design time.