Patent ID: 8677309

Claim:
A method comprising: storing, by a computer system in a shared data store, a definition of a business process including a set of business tasks, the business process being a functional representation of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Application, wherein one or more of the set of business tasks comprises business logic that corresponds to the business process, and wherein the storing is performed during a first lifecycle phase of the SOA application corresponding at least in part to defining of the SOA application at least partially by the set of business tasks; collecting, by the computer system, metadata pertaining to a software service that fulfills a business task in the set of business tasks, wherein the collecting is performed during a second lifecycle phase of the SOA application subsequent to the first lifecycle phase, the second lifecycle phase of the SOA application corresponding at least in part to associating the metadata with the software service that fulfills the business task; generating, by the computer system, a hierarchy for the business process, the set of business tasks, and a set of software services, the set of software services comprising the software service, wherein the hierarchy organizes the set of business tasks comprising business logic for the business process, and one or more software services of the set of software services for implementing each task of the set of business tasks; generating, by the computer system, a user interface, the user interface presenting the hierarchy with user-selectable options to add and/or remove business tasks and/or software services with respect to the business process; receiving, via the user interface, a selection corresponding to the user-selectable options to add and/or remove business tasks and/or software services with respect to the business process; generating, by the computer system, a deployment plan for the SOA application based on the definition of the business process, the selection, and the metadata; and generating a deployment properties file that specifies one or more locations for deploying the SOA application, wherein the SOA application is deployed based on the deployment plan and the deployment properties file; wherein the deployment plan and the deployment properties file are configured to be interpreted by an installation driver that automatically deploys SOA application content based at least in part on location information of the deployment properties file.