Business Layer

Business Layer elements model the operational organisation of the enterprise from a technology-independent business point of view. The Business Layer elements answer the What you do? question, defining business services, functions and processes.

From the ArchiMate® business layer element set, this reference architecture implements the following elements:

Element	Description	Notation
Business role	Represents the responsibility for performing specific behaviour, to which an actor can be assigned, or the part an actor plays in a particular action or event.
Business interface	Represents a point of access where a business service is made available to the environment.
Business process	Represents a sequence of business behaviours that achieves a specific result, such as a defined set of products or business services.
Business function	Represents a collection of business behaviours based on a chosen set of criteria (typically required business resources and/or competencies), closely aligned to an organisation, but not necessarily explicitly governed by the organisation.
Business event	Represents an organisational state change.
Business service	Represents explicitly defined behaviour that a business role, business actor, or business collaboration exposes to its environment.
Business object	Represents a concept used within a particular business domain.
Contract	Represents a formal or informal specification of an agreement between a provider and a consumer that specifies the rights and obligations associated with a product and establishes functional and non-functional parameters for interaction.

The views of the business layer are structured according to the corresponding OAIS functional entity and extended with Pre-Ingest:

• Pre-Ingest

• Ingest

• Access

• Preservation Planning

• Administration (no single view, administration tasks are included in the other OAIS functional entity views)

• Data Management

• Archival Storage

The main focus of the eArchiving Building Block is interoperability. Our approach, therefore, follows a top-down logic and intends to define those elements of the Reference Architecture in detail that are more important from an interoperability point-of-view.

From those business services that are more important from an interoperability aspect, the reference architecture provides an overview and a detailed view; from those less important, only an overview.

Example scenarios

Several business scenarios accompany the business layer views. These are real-world examples that intend to present the diagrams' usage and clarify eventual questions or misunderstandings using the model.