In the course of doing business a service provider interacts with other entities such as individuals and organizations (or parts of organizations).  Individuals and organizations are known as parties.  Parties can play a number of different roles from a service provider’s perspective.  A party could play the role of customer, employee, supplier, partner, and so forth.  Business interactions can also involve such things as applications, intelligent devices, and other types of resources.  Interactions can also involve customer accounts.<br/>Business interactions take the form of requests, responses, notifications, and agreements.  The figure below depicts a business interaction and its various types.<br/>The following Figure also shows that business interactions can be related to each other.  For example, a request for information from an individual is followed by a response from a service provider back to the individual.  The request and the response are associated with each other so that the string of related business interactions is maintained.  The figure below shows this type of relationship between business interactions.<br/>