The following schema provides a full overview of the WebLab platform architecture based on SOA ideas.

Description of each layer and each module

The general architecture can be seen as a multi-layer architecture. Having a top down view, we can describe the architecture with the following layers:

• An user layer providing access to:
  • Specific applications such as batch processing functions,
  • Graphical user interfaces that may be included in a web portal. This enable the user to access services in an hidden way through a simple web browser: the activation of processing chain is then called.
  • A business process design application such as a workflow editor enabling to define service chain and tools to support deployment, and configuration, .
  • An administration and monitoring application that enable to control the execution of the processing chains and to check the correct execution of the processing chains (service availability, lack of errors, etc.).
• An orchestration layer that is responsible for acting as an intermediary between services in order to perform a business process. Orchestration scripts can be defined by an external graphical tool that generates process description in languages such as BPEL or XPDL. The orchestration layer embeds an execution engine that is able to run process description in the previous languages. 
• A communication and distribution layer able to route messages between services.
• A business services layer composed of the services that will be developed for the platform .
• A technical services layer composed of the element presented above: semantic entity storage, service directory, security and supervision.