US Patent:
20020032590, Mar 14, 2002
Inventors:
Rangachari Anand - Teaneck NJ, US
Mitchell Cohen - Yorktown Heights NY, US
Vibby Gottemukkala - Ossining NY, US
Anant Jhingran - San Jose CA, US
Manoj Kumar - Yorktown Heights NY, US
Rakesh Mohan - Stamford CT, US
Carlos Perez - Germantown MD, US
Jakka Sairamesh - New York NY, US
Karthikeyan Seetharaman - Peekskill NY, US
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY
International Classification:
G06F017/60
Abstract:
A method for allowing flexible creation and alteration of business processes within a commerce system includes using state machines to describe the actions that can be taken by particular roles at particular points in a process. The state machines are used by a commerce system to enforce validity of user actions, to track the execution of actions within an instance of the business process, to provide the user interface with a list of actions available to a user working on an instance of the business process, to provide coordination between state machines, and to allow different organizations to have varied business processes.