Patent ID: 7424717

Claim:
A method for using session beans to integrate business processes, comprising the steps of: operating a process engine on a computer server, wherein the process engine includes a workflow stored and executing thereon, and wherein the process engine allows applications to interact with business processes, including triggering notifications to the business processes when events occur within the workflow; providing a plug-in framework that operates on the computer server, and provides an interface for the applications to interact with the process engine, and allows an existing workflow to be dynamically modified, wherein the plug-in framework includes a plug-in manager that allows for plug-ins to be registered with the workflow, and a database store that includes plug-in configuration information, and wherein the plug-in framework allows for: creating session beans for use with the process engine, defining the session beans in the database store, packaging the session beans for deployment, and deploying the session beans to the process engine as a plug-in, to dynamically modify the workflow running therein, so that when packaged and deployed to the process engine as a plug-in the session beans are automatically discovered by the plug-in framework and dynamically modify the workflow currently running on the process engine by registering listeners for specific notifications and then executing a workflow functionality when the specific notifications are triggered; and using the plug-in manager to handle event notifications to and from the deployed session beans at runtime, according to the workflow, as modified.