DecidR

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software deployment model that has rapidly gained significance over the last few years. A lot of companies already provide SaaS solutions in many different business areas. A major drawback of existing SaaS solutions is, however, their reliance on proprietary standards and middleware.

In this project we’re developing a Software as a Service application that is based on open standards. Our goal is to provide a tool that can be used to create models of decision processes and to execute those models. A decision process could be, for instance, handing in a written exam and the following grading, writing a paper, a software review process, a business proposal process, etc.

DecidR is designed to allow a wide range of real life problems to be modeled as decision processes. Users will be able to customize the application according to their needs with little knowledge of the underlying technologies. To make such a high degree of flexibility possible the application is based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA), implemented using Web Services. The workflow layer is implemented using the Web Service Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). All remaining components of the system are implemented as Web Services using the Java language.

DecidR is implemented as a web application. New users are able to subscribe to the application via a web interface. Once registered, the user is able to use the DecidR service to the full extent.