Using web services for a workflow engine

The aim of this paper is to describe an architecture developed to integrate solutions for the management and organization of a generic market. This represents an interesting case study for Web Service deployment. We call this architecture Workflow Engine. The actors involved in the market are characterized by a specific role. We describe a document centric approach, in which the evolution of each single business process can be reconstructed through the documents exchanged through messages. We will observe how the message-oriented approach is fundamental to completely exploit the Web Services available technology.