HANDLING INVOICE BASED SERVICES

1 . An article of manufacture including a computer readable storage medium to tangibly store instructions, which when executed by one or more computers in a network of computers causes the performance of the following operation:

the one or more computers receiving an invoice service message related to a business process;

the one or more computers analyzing the invoice service message;

based upon the analysis, the one or more computers identifying a business-specific implementation, from one or more business-specific implementations, for processing the invoice service message; and

the one or more computers executing the business-specific implementation to process the invoice service message.

2 . The article of manufacture of claim 1 , wherein the invoice service message includes at least one of the following:

a type of a business partner sending the invoice service message; and

a service request identifier indicating at least one of the following services requested by the business partner:

creating one or more invoices;

canceling the one or more invoices;

reading the one or more invoices; and

updating the one or more invoices.

3 . The article of manufacture of claim 1 , wherein the business-specific implementation is a standard invoice implementation and wherein the standard invoice implementation is associated with one or more standard invoices.

4 . The article of manufacture of claim 1 , wherein the one or more business-specific implementations are defined for corresponding one or more business processes.

5 . The article of manufacture of claim 1 , wherein each of the one or more business-specific implementations includes:

a business-specific inbound mapping implementation for performing inbound mapping on the invoice service message;

a business-specific outbound mapping implementation for performing outbound mapping on the invoice service message; and

an application processing implementation for processing the invoice service message.

6 . The article of manufacture of claim 5 further comprising instructions which when executed cause the one or more computers to:

identify the business process related to the invoice service message;

based upon the identified business process, determine the application processing implementation for processing the invoice service message; and

execute the application processing implementation to:

select one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) associated with the application processing implementation; and

execute the selected one or more APIs.

7 . The article of manufacture of claim 5 , wherein each of the business-specific implementation is controlled by an invoice processing framework.

8 . The article of manufacture of claim 7 further comprising instructions which when executed cause the one or more computers to:

identify a new business-specific implementation defined for a new business process; and

integrate the new business-specific implementation with the invoice processing framework.

9 . The article of manufacture of claim 7 , wherein the invoice processing framework includes at least one of the following:

a confirmation module;

a validation module;

an error handling module;

an inbound mapping module;

an outbound mapping module; and

an application processing module.

10 . The article of manufacture of claim 9 , wherein the inbound mapping module is associated with one or more business-specific inbound mapping implementations included within the corresponding one or more business-specific implementations and the outbound mapping module is associated with one or more business-specific outbound mapping implementations included within the corresponding one or more business-specific implementations.

11 . The article of manufacture of claim 10 further comprising instructions which when executed cause the one or more computers to perform at least one of the following:

identify the business process related to the invoice service message;

based upon the identified business process, determine at least one of the business-specific inbound mapping implementation and the business-specific outbound mapping implementation for performing the inbound mapping and the outbound mapping, respectively, on the invoice service message.

12 . The article of manufacture of claim 9 , wherein the confirmation module is associated with one or more business-specific confirmation implementations included within the respective business-specific implementation.

13 . A method for handling invoice related services implemented on a network of one or more computers, the method comprising:

the one or more computers receiving an invoice service message related to a business process;

the one or more computers analyzing the invoice service message;

based upon the analysis, the one or more computers identifying a business-specific implementation, from one or more business-specific implementations, for processing the invoice service message; and

the one or more computers executing the business-specific implementation to process the invoice service message.

14 . The method of claim 13 , wherein the one or more business-specific implementations are related to corresponding one or more specific business processes and wherein each of the business-specific implementation includes an application processing implementation for processing the invoice service message.

15 . The method of claim 14 further comprising:

the one or more computers identifying the business process related to the invoice service message;

based upon the identified business process, the one or more computers determining the application processing implementation for processing the invoice service message; and

the one or more computers executing the application processing implementation to:

select one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) associated with the application processing implementation; and

execute the selected one or more APIs.

16 . The method of claim 14 , wherein each of the business-specific implementation is controlled by an invoice processing.

17 . The method of claim 16 further comprising:

the one or more computers identifying a new business-specific implementation defined for a new business process; and

the one or more computers integrating the new business-specific implementation with the invoice processing framework.

18 . The method of claim 13 further comprising at least one of the followings:

the one or more computers identifying the business process related to the invoice service message; and

based upon the identified business process, the one or more computers determining a business-specific inbound mapping implementation and a business-specific outbound mapping implementation for performing an inbound mapping and an outbound mapping, respectively, on the invoice service message.

19 . A computer system for handling invoice based services, comprising:

a memory to store program code; and

a processor communicatively coupled to the memory, the processor configured to execute the program code to cause one or more computers in a network of computers to:

receive an invoice service message related to a business process;

analyze the invoice service message;

based upon the analysis, identify a business-specific implementation, from one or more business-specific implementations, for processing the invoice service message; and

execute the business-specific implementation to process the invoice service message.

20 . The computer system of claim 19 , wherein the processor is further configured to perform at least one of the following:

identify the business process related to the invoice service message;

based upon the identified business process, determine an application processing implementation associated with the business-specific implementation; and

execute the application processing implementation to process the invoice service message.