A business object oriented layered enterprise architecture

The use of distributed objects can bring many benefits in constructing new generations of applications-those that can flexibly accommodate changes as required by the more dynamic and interactive nature of businesses today. Such benefits, however, can be fully exploited only if a distributed system is designed according to a standard open architecture. This paper proposes such an architecture in terms of layered subsystems comprised of business objects. The architecture supports the application needs of the distributed enterprise and offers enterprise meta-modelling, object management, workflow, directory and communications services.