Patent ID: 8271609

Claim:
A method for dynamic service invocation and dynamic service adaptation in the context of a service-oriented application of a business process execution language (BPEL), the method comprising: initiating a plurality of mediator services, wherein each mediator service is associated with an actual service in a plurality of actual services, and wherein the plurality of mediator services are configured to expose a common, abstract operation; determining, at runtime of the application, a selection of a mediator service in the plurality of mediator services for executing the abstract operation; and invoking, at runtime of the application, the abstract operation by sending an invocation message to the selected mediator service, wherein the BPEL process is enabled to dynamically invoke any type of operation exposed by any of the plurality of mediator services, regardless of the abstract operation's name and message schema, and wherein all transformation logic of the BPEL process is encapsulated in the plurality of mediator services such that when a new service is made available or when an interface of an existing service is changed, only the affected of the plurality of mediator services, rather than the BPEL process, is required to be modified, and wherein, in response to receiving the invocation message, the selected mediator service is configured to: transform the invocation message into a format appropriate for invoking an actual operation exposed by an actual service associated with the selected mediator service; and invoke the actual operation by sending the transformed invocation message to the actual service.