Patent ID: 8688495

Claim:
A computer program product comprising application software encoded on a non-transitory tangible machine-readable medium, the application software being structured as process components interacting with each other through service interfaces, the software comprising: a plurality of process components, each of the process components comprising a modular and application-independent package of reusable granular software implementing a respective and distinct business process, the business process comprising functionality exposed by the process component, each of the process components including one or more business objects, the plurality of process components including: a Project Processing process component that is responsible for structuring, planning, and executing measures or projects; a Time and Labor Management process component that supports a definition of employees' planned working time as well as a recording of actual working times and absences; an Accounting process component that records relevant business transactions; and a Goods and Service Acknowledgement process component that includes a Goods and Service Acknowledgement business object, which is a document that states a recipient's obligation to pay a supplier for goods received or services rendered; and a plurality of service interface operations, each service interface operation being implemented for a respective process component, the operations comprising inbound and outbound operations, the outbound operation for a first process component being operable to send a message to a second process component of the plurality of process components, the second process component having an inbound operation for receiving the message, a passing of messages between an inbound and an outbound operation defining a message-based pair-wise interaction between the respective process components of the respective operations, the pair-wise interactions between pairs of the process components including interactions between: the Time and Labor Management process component and the Accounting process component; the Time and Labor Management process component and the Goods and Service Acknowledgement process component; and the Project Processing process component and the Time and Labor Management process component, wherein each of the plurality of process components is assigned to exactly one deployment unit among multiple deployment units, and each deployment unit is deployable on a separate computer hardware platform independent of every other deployment unit, and all interaction between a process component in one deployment unit and any other process component in any other deployment unit takes place through the respective service interfaces of the two process components.