Extending UN/CEFACT’s modeling methodology by a UML profile for local choreographies

UN/CEFACT’s modeling methodology (UMM) is a UML profile for specifying global choreographies of inter-organizational e-business systems. As we outline in this paper, the practical use of UMM is limited to bi-lateral business collaborations, since it does not support nested business transactions. This means UMM does not support multi-party business collaborations. UN/CEFACT argues that UMM serves as model capturing the agreements and commitments between business partners. These agreements and commitments are always on a bi-lateral basis. However, a business partner in the middle of a supply chain must establish multiple agreements and commitments with multiple partners. It is the local choreography of a business partner that binds the various bi-lateral models leading to a multi-party choreography. Unfortunately, UN/CEFACT does not give any guidance on how to model the local choreographies. We close this gap by extending UMM by a UML profile for local choreographies.