Patent ID: 8108834

Claim:
A computer-implemented technique for executing a business workflow management process, comprising: providing a class to a process engine executing on a processing management server, the process engine and the process class being implemented in an object-oriented programming language, the class having at least one annotation that defines at least a portion of a business workflow management process, the process comprising user interactions with distributed services, wherein the annotation is a run-time-readable, non-executable declarative programming construct that is associated with a first method of the class, and specifies at least one transition rule and a second method of the class associated with the transition rule; executing the first method and the second method of the process class by parsing the annotation to extract the transition rule; receiving a message at the process engine from a source external to the process engine; evaluating, by the process engine, whether the transition rule is satisfied, responsively to the message; and upon finding that the transition rule is satisfied, invoking the second method by the process engine, so as to generate an output with respect to the message.