On State Synchronization of Business Conversations

摘要

The paper assumes that business interactions between trading partners are composed of well defined conversations (tasks), such as issue a purchase order, process payment, refund money, cancel purchase order, etc. Using RosettaNet partner interface processes (PIPs) as an example of these conversations, the paper discusses a method that guarantees that trading partners have a mutually consistent view of the state of business interactions despite encountering software and hardware related problems (e.g., clock skews, unpredictable transmission delays, message loss etc.). The paper develops centralized as well as distributed execution models and outlines the middleware functionality required for maintaining consistency