Business Object Facilities - A Comparative Analysis.

Rapidly changing business processes require quick adaption of supporting information systems. Component technologies in general and business objects, in particular seem a promising approach. In this paper, we survey, analyse and compare six business object approaches. We develop a comparison model covering concepts, distribution infrastructure, object facilities and object solutions. We then use the model to analyse the Combined Submission to the OMG Business Object Domain Task Force, the SSA Business Object Facility, Sun's Enterprise JavaBeans, IBM's San Francisco, Microsoft ActiveX and the SAP Business Framework. Each of the approaches is described in terms of the model, which allows us to compare them analytically. 1 Introduction Today's enterprises face highly competitive markets. They are forced to constantly adapt to new requirements, to revisit products, to change processes, to change suppliers and to establish new collaborations. Information systems supporting such ent...