Patent ID: 7236939
Filing Date: 2007-06-26
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method for managing peer-to-peer collaborative inter-enterprise business processes between two different enterprises having first and second collaborative process managers (CPM) comprising: defining a collaborative business process (CBP) specified by a collaborative process definition (CPD) and based on a collaboration protocol, the CPD comprising: (1) a list of participating process-roles for first and second peer process instances, (2) plural work nodes each having an activity to be completed and a task role that matches one of the defined process-roles and private sub-processes unavailable to other peer process instances, and (3) templates having definitions, initial values and sharing scope, being specified as public or private, of process data objects, the templates being either public and sharable by all process roles and peer process instances or private and sharable by only peer instances having a specified process-role; performing the CBP by instantiating and executing first and second peer process instances of the CBP by the CPMs to form a single logical execution instance of the CBP identified by a unique cooperation key assigned to the peer process instances each having a role and being responsible only for the work nodes having a role matching the role of the peer process instance; wherein the CPMs′ schedule, dispatch and control work nodes and include a private sub-process manager and an out-of-order handler mechanism that halts execution when messages from other CPMs are received out-of-order; launching activities of the work nodes by exchanging process data having the templates that specify sharing scopes of the exchanged data objects and updating the templates and sharing scope during process data exchange; and using the cooperation key to identify a logical instance of the CBP and to correlate and synchronize via peer-to-peer information exchange between the first and second CPMs.