Patent ID: 7065741

Claim:
A method of designing an information flow process, comprising the steps of: determining a predetermined set of activity names in a predetermined sequence, the activity names respectively representing certain service operations; displaying the activity names as information provider activity names and information consumer activity names according to the predetermined sequence in a predetermined data flow definition (DFD) matrix format; specifying an information name, one of the information provider activity names and a corresponding one of the information consumer activity names, the information name at a position in the predetermined DFD matrix format representing data to be transmitted from the information provider activity name to the information consumer activity name; storing the relations among the information provider activity names, the information names and the information consumer activity names in an entity relation (ER) source information file; further determining associated detailed activities of a selected one of the activity names; updating the predetermined DFD matrix format based upon the associated detailed activities for displaying the activity names; and storing the activity names with the associated detailed activities in the ER source information file.