Applying Model-Driven Development to Collaborative Business Processes

Currently enterprises are focusing on the setting up of Business-to-Business collaborative relationships with their partners. One of the main challenges in these relationships is the definition of the Collaborative Business Processes. These processes have to be defined first in a business level using a technologyindependent language, and then in a technological level using a Business-to-Business standard. Both definitions must have a mutual correspondence. Therefore, in this paper we present a model-driven development method to support the design of collaborative processes. As part of this method we describe the modeling language UP-ColBPIP to design technology-independent collaborative processes. This language supports the definition of these processes through interaction protocols. In addition, we provide a model transformation method that defines how from UP-ColBPIP collaborative process models we can generate specifications based on the ebXML standard for implementing collaborative processes.