Showing papers on "Workflow published in 1996"

Distributed workflow resource management system and method

Abstract: A system and method for distributed resource management in a computer network operating under control of workflow management software system (WFMS) to manage plural resources to perform a workflow process that includes multiple process activities, uses two-step resource assignment to manage resources at two levels. The resources are grouped by capabilities into resource groups controlled by a local resource manager (LRM), which maintains dynamic status of each resource, such as availability and load, as well as their roles and addresses. A global resource manager (GRM) stores resource data only about the groups: capabilities and status. The WFMS invokes the GRM, requesting a specified resource activity. The GRM checks the stored capabilities and status among the resource groups, selects the resource group capable of the specified activity and available, and forwards the request to the LRM for the selected group. The LRM selects one of the resources in the group to perform the specified activity and assigns the activity to that resource.

Computerized method and system for managing business processes using linked workflows

Abstract: A system for analyzing and structuring business processes implemented in software to provides businesses with tools to manage business processes. The system i) notifies the user that he or she has a step to begin or to complete; ii) provides the user with the proper tools to complete a task; iii) provides the user with the proper information to complete a task; iv) allows the user to see where a task fits in the overall process; v) manages proper reminders, alerts, and follow-ups to keep the process moving; vi) automates certain standard procedures; vii) integrates with the organization's existing business systems; and viii) provides application program interfaces that allow developers to develop applications that are workflow-enabled. The system utilizes a workflow server including a transactions manager and a database.

Advanced transaction models in workflow contexts

Abstract: In recent years, numerous transaction models have been proposed to address the problems posed by advanced database applications, but only a few of these models are being used in commercial products. In this paper, we make the case that such models may be too centered around databases to be useful in real environments. Advanced applications raise a variety of issues that are not addressed at all by transaction models. These same issues, however, are the basis for existing workflow systems, which are having considerable success as commercial products in spite of not having a solid theoretical foundation. We explore some of these issues and show that, in many aspects, workflow models are a superset of transaction models and have the added advantage of incorporating a variety of ideas that have so far remained outside the scope of traditional transaction processing.

Medical record management system and process with improved workflow features

Abstract: A patient medical record system includes a number of caregiver computers, and a patient record database with patient data coupled to the caregiver computers selectively providing access to the patient data from one of the caregiver computers responsive to a predetermined set of access rules. The predetermined set of rules includes a rule that access to a predetermined portion of the patient data by a first caregiver must be terminated before access to the same predetermined portion by a second caregiver is allowed.

An Authorization Model for Workflows

Abstract: Workflows represent processes in manufacturing and office environments that typically consist of several well-defined activities (known as tasks) To ensure that these tasks are executed by authorized users or processes (subjects), proper authorization mechanisms must be in place Moreover, to make sure that authorized subjects gain access on the required objects only during the execution of the specific task, granting and revoking of privileges need to be synchronized with the progression of the workflow A predefined specification of the privileges often allows access for more than the time required, thus, though a subject completes the task or have not yet begun the task, it may still possess privileges to access the objects, resulting in compromising security

Method and apparatus for dynamic optimization of business processes managed by a computer system

Abstract: The invention relates to a method and a device for the dynamic optimization of business processes, the business process instances of a business process being managed by a workflow management computer system. The invention is in particular characterized by collecting, investigating and storing parameters, processing data and result data, and subsequently optimizing business processes on the basis of stored information by identifying a business process instance having propitious result data, modifying the parameters of said instance and subsequent verification of such modification. The invention is further characterized by the use of genetic algorithms and orthogonal matrices for the modification of the parameters of the identified business process instance with propitious result data. The invention is suitable for being used in the process optimization in production engineering and plant engineering and in process optimization in the service field.

Workflow management systems for process organisations

Abstract: From the Functional to the Process-Centred Organisation.- Analysis and Design of Cooperative Networks.- Workflow Management Technology.- Field Study 1: The Coordinator Supporting Distributed Management Processes in a Training Company.- Field Study 2: X_Workflow for Overdraft Management in a Bank.- Conclusion.

Freeflow: mediating between representation and action in workflow systems

Abstract: In order to understand some problems associated with workflow, we set out an analysis of workflow systems, identifying a number of basic issues in the underlying technology. This points to the conflation of temporal and dependency information as the source of a number of these problems. We describe Freeflow, a prototype which addresses these problems using a variety of technical innovations, including a rich constraint-based process modelling formalism, and the use of declarative dependency relationships. Its focus is on mediation between process “and action, rather than the enactment of a process. We outline the system and its design principles, and illustrate the features of our approach with examples from ongoing work.

Integrated activity management system

Abstract: A system for managing workflow of specific types of activities includes a database and at least one computer workstation connected to an integrated activities management system. The integrated activities management system strictly controls the entry, routing and processing of attribute information associated with each of the activities to manage the execution of the activity. The integrated activities management system utilizes an information organization system to maintain attribute information concerning each activity in the form of data records consisting of linked data objects in the database. Each type of data object has associated control rules which govern the entry, routing and processing of its attribute information. The data objects in each data record are arranged in a hierarchical manner and including data objects from at least a first hierarchical level and an activity level. The first hierarchical level data object contains information common to activities of all types. The activity level data object contains attribute information common to only that type of activity. The use of the hierarchial arrangement and first hierarchical level data objects facilitates changes to the managing and tracking routines in an existing system, as well as modification of the system to manage new activities of similar or dissimilar types.

Method and apparatus for building and running workflow process models using a hypertext markup language

Abstract: Apparatus and computer implemented method for process modeling using both a web server and a workflow server in process definition. During buildtime, a process definition in the language of some workflow process modeler is fed to transform f(p), which provides a translate process definition into a hypertext markup language (HTML) representation of the workflow process. A user utilizing the facilities of an HTTP server may operate a web browser to request that HTTP server provide the HTML process definition to enable the user to create, or read and modify, the process definition as desired. The result is then fed through an inverse transform f'(p) to a workflow server in the language of that server, for invocation and execution during runtime of the programs defined during buildtime.

The Mentor project: steps towards enterprise-wide workflow management

Abstract: Enterprise-wide workflow management where workflows may span multiple organizational units require particular consideration of scalability, heterogeneity, and availability issues. The Mentor project, introduced in this paper, aims to reconcile a rigorous workflow specification method with a distributed middleware architecture as a step towards enterprise-wide solutions. The project uses the formalism of state and activity charts and a commercial tool, Statemate, for workflow specification. A first prototype of Mentor has been built which allows executing specifications in a distributed manner. A major contribution of this paper is the method for transforming a centralized state chart specification into a form that is amenable to a distributed execution and to incorporate the necessary synchronization between different processing entities. Fault tolerance issues are addressed by coupling Mentor with the Tuxedo TP monitor.

Report from the NSF workshop on workflow and process automation in information systems

Abstract: An interdisciplinary research community needs to address challenging issues raised by applying workflow management technology in information systems. This conclusion results from the NSF workshop on Workflow and Process Automation in Information Systems which was held at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia during May 8-10, 1996. The workshop brought together active researchers and practitioners from several communities, with significant representation from database and distributed systems, software process and software engineering, and computer supported cooperative work. The presentations given at the workshop are available in the form of an electronic proceedings of this workshop at http://lsdis.cs.uga.edu/activities/). This report is the joint work of selected representatives from the workshop and it documents the results of significant group discussions and exchange of ideas.

Database research: achievements and opportunities into the 1st century

Abstract: In May, 1995 an NSF workshop on the future of database management systems research was convened. This paper reports the conclusions of that meeting. Among the most important directions for future DBMS research recommended by the panel are: support for multimedia objects; managing distributed and loosely coupled information, as on the world-wide web; supporting new database applications such as data mining and warehousing; workflow and other complex transaction-management problems, and enhancing the ease-of-use of DBMS''s for both users and system managers.

Workflow recovery

Abstract: Workflow management systems (WFMSs) are becoming the basic technology for organizations to perform their daily business processes (workflows). A consistent and reliable execution of such processes is crucial for all organizations. The authors claim that this can only be achieved by integrating transactional features-especially "workflow transactions"-into WFMSs. Based on this idea, they discuss in detail advanced workflow recovery concepts which are necessary for the reliable and consistent execution of business processes in the presence of failures and exceptions. Additionally, they distinguish between different workflow types and present adequate recovery concepts for each of them.

Workflow system for operating and managing jobs with predicting future progress of workflow job

Abstract: A workflow system includes workflow defining portion for defining workflow information necessary for operating workflow job to be realized by a sequence of unit businesses for which a plurality of workers are involved, workflow operating and managing portion for managing progress of the workflow job according to workflow information defined by the workflow defining means and urging execution of the unit job, individual information managing portion for managing individual information relating to each worker involving each unit job, and workflow predicting and evaluating projection for obtaining the workflow information defined by the workflow defining means, progress information indicative of progress of job of the workflow job managed by the workflow operating and managing means, and individual information managed by the individual information managing means, and for predicting future progress of the workflow job.

CORBA-Based Run Time Architectures for Workflow Management Systems

Abstract: This article presents five run-time architectures for implementing a Workflow Management System (WFMS). The architectures range from highly centralized to fully distributed. Two of the architectures have been implemented at the Large Scale Distributed Information Systems (LSDIS) Lab at The University of Georgia. All the WFMS architectures are designed on top of a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) implementation. The article also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the architectures and the suitability of CORBA as a communication infrastructure. A minor extension to CORBA’s Interface Definition Language (IDL) is proposed to provide an alternative means of specifying workflows. Simplified examples from the healthcare domain are given to illustrate our workflow technology.

INCAs: Managing Dynamic Workflows in Distributed Environments

Abstract: A workflow is a long-duration multi-step activity. In this paper we are interested in workflows that execute under the control of various processing stations that may be located at different nodes of a distributed system. The stations may be autonomous and only partially automated. We present the design and a proposed implementation of a new model for workflow management that is based on a concept of an Information Carriers (INCA). Workflow computations are carried out as interactions between INCAs and the processing stations with the locus of control of a computation migrating with the workflow. The model presented is modular in the sense that modification of a sub-activities of the workflow does not necessarily require changes to the workflow specification. Furthermore, the model preserves the autonomy of the processing stations and does not require them to change the means they use to process the individual steps of the workflow activity.

Method and system for managing workflow of electronic documents

Abstract: A workflow managing system includes a workflow server for automatically extracting a next workflow entrance location from an electronic document for management of the next workflow entrance location. The workflow server analyzes the entered electronic document to extract a document type candidate from the electronic document, classifies the electronic document in accordance with the document type, refers to a table showing a relationship between the document types and in-charge departments or in-charge users associated therewith at the time of circulating the classified electronic document, automatically extracts next workflow entrance location candidate information for circulation of the sorted document type candidates, sends the sorted electronic document to the user terminal of the next workflow entrance location candidate, receives a signal indicative of acquisition or remand of the document circulated from the document-circulated user terminal, judges correctness or incorrectness of the next workflow entrance location candidate information, and confirms the correctness or incorrectness of the circulation.

The evolution towards flexible workflow systems

Abstract: The simultaneous evolution of personal computing tools and networks has focused attention on the notion of harnessing computer technology to assist in human collaboration on group work. While personal productivity tool technology and use have reached a high level of sophistication, the most basic ideas for how computer technology should assist in collaboration across the network have not yet converged. The approaches range from ones where coordination of work is uniquely human-controlled, to workflow-based approaches where the computer is involved in scheduling the group's work. This survey paper describes how workflow technology has evolved from a modelling focus to flexible model-based systems to support collaborative work across this range of work styles.

Deriving Active Rules for Workflow Enactment

Abstract: Workflows consist of computer-supported, data-intensive activities which involve multiple “steps” of processing; Workflow management is an emerging and challenging field, offering opportunities for exporting database technology beyond its classical boundaries. In particular, active rules supported by many database systems appear as an ideal paradigm for expressing the control and data flows between processing steps, and consequently they are being proposed as a suitable implementation mechanism for Workflow managers. On the other end, active rules appear a too low level description of Workflows to be presented to Workflow system users.

Petri-net-based workflow management software

Abstract: At the moment more than 250 Workflow Management Systems (WFMSs) are under development. This signifies that the term ‘workflow management’ is not just another buzzword. The phenomenon workflow management will have a tremendous impact on the next generation of information systems. Nevertheless, workflow management is still in its infancy. Despite the efforts of the Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC) [8], standardization is lacking. One of the main reasons for this is the absence of a conceptual framework for workflow management. Such is a framework is very important. Recall what the impact of the Relational Data Model [4] and the Entity-Relationship Model [3] had on database management software.

Providing High Availability in Very Large Worklflow Management Systems

Abstract: Workflow management systems (WFMS) support the modeling, coordinated execution and monitoring of business processes within an organization. In particular, very large workflow management systems are used in organizations with several thousand users, hundreds of thousands of process instances, and several thousand sites, all distributed over wide geographic areas. In these environments, failure of the WFMS or the underlying workflow database which stores the meta-information about the processes is not tolerable. This paper addresses the problem of providing high availability in workflow management systems by proposing a backup technique which ensures that execution of a process instance can be resumed at any point in time in the event of a failure. An essential characteristic of our backup scheme is that it allows the user to define different availability levels, reducing the cost of maintaining backups. The backup scheme is implemented using the workflow semantics, which we believe will (i) make it independent of the underlying workflow database, thus permitting the use of heterogeneous databases as primary and backup, (ii) reduce overheads, especially when compared to backup schemes provided by database systems.

Workflow real time intervention

Abstract: A workflow system that automates the definition and execution of a procedure that can be carried out according to defined rules among agents. Agents may be individual users, work groups, organizations, or automatic systems. Automation is used to guarantee that all the individual activities are taken in the defined sequence, form, and time. The system separates the three basic elements necessary to perform a procedure--a co-ordination service, an organization service, and a transport service. The co-ordination service ensures proper sequence of the activities of the procedure. The organization services identifies a particular agent to perform a task within a procedure. The agent selection can be made when the procedure is defined, or it can be deferred until an instance using the procedure is performed. The transport service is used to move information between agents and an information service, which holds instance data, while processing an instance.

ORBWork: A Reliable Distributed CORBA-based Workflow Enactment System for METEOR2

Abstract: Key limitations of the state-of-art workkow products and research prototypes include the lack of adequate support for functioning in heterogeneous environments that involve humans and automated tasks distributed across enterprises, limited scalability, and the lack of adequate support for dealing with errors and failures in real-world organizational settings. Emergence of network computing based on Web and distributed object management provide an attractive infrastructure to address these issues. Workkow management techniques developed in the METEOR 2 project are intended to reliably support coordination of user and automated tasks in real-world multi-enterprise heterogeneous computing environments. Key capabilities of the METEOR 2 workkow management system (WFMS) include a comprehensive toolkit for building workkows (map/data/task design) and supporting high-level process modeling, detailed work-ow speciication, and automatic code generation for its workkow enactment systems-WEB-Work and ORBWork. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of ORBWork, reliable and fully distributed a CORBA-based enactment system for the METEOR 2 WFMS. In addition to providing coordination capabilities in a heterogeneous and distributed environment, ORBWork supports scalable software architecture, multi-database access, as well as an error detection and recovery framework that uses transactional concepts. The recovery framework is based on a hierarchical error model, and includes mechanisms for persistence, monitoring and recovery of workkow system components.

A hospital integrated framework for multimodality image base management

Abstract: The trend in healthcare information technology is increasingly digital and multimedia oriented. The next generation of health care information systems will consist of a vast network of heterogeneous, autonomous, and distributed imaging scanners, databases, information systems, knowledge intensive applications, and large quantities of multimedia medical data. A key challenge facing system researchers and builders is to provide a new organizational framework that can integrate this varied collection of resources into what appears to be a uniform and logical conglomeration of data and knowledge store in order to increase the availability of global or previously nonaccessible information and to address demanding new information processing requirements for diverse image-assisted medical applications. The purpose of this paper is to present the authors' research toward the development of a hospital integrated framework of multimodality image base management (MIBM) for digital radiology of the future. This evolutionary framework consists of three hierarchical components: a hospital-integrated picture archiving and communication system (HI-PACS), a medical image database system (MIDS), and a set of image-based medical applications that relies on the support of MIDS and PACS. In this paper, the authors describe the system architecture, guiding principles, and design specifications of HI-PACS and MIDS and illustrate their functions and capabilities with three implemented applications, namely, patient folder workflow, distributed object management, and multimodality imaging studies. In addition, the authors conclude their findings with a summary of challenges and research directions.

Supporting State-Wide Immunisation Tracking Using Multi-Paradigm Workflow Technology

Abstract: The rapidly evolving managed healthcare industry requires efficient coordination of human and automated tasks as well as information-flow across multiple enterprises. One of the most critical applications in managed care is state-wide immunization tracking, which if supported by appropriate workflow technology can achieve substantial near term impact. In this paper, we discuss a comprehensive and real-world application to support child immunization tracking for the state of Connecticut in close collaboration with CHREFl. The application system uses UGA-LSDIS’s2 multi-paradigm transactional workflow management system METEOR:!. It utilizes the World Wide Web either exclusively, or in conjunction with CORBA-based infrastructures. Permission to copy without fee afl or part of lhi8 material is granted provided that the copie8 are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the VLDB copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice i8 given that copying is by permission of the Very Large Data Base Endowment. To copy otherwise, or to republish, require8 a fee and/or special permission from the Endowment. Proceedings of the 22nd VLDB Conference Mumbai(Bombay), India, 1996 ‘Connecticut Healthcare Research and Education Foundation .‘Large Scale Distributed Information Systems Lab., The University of Georgia

A transactional nested process management system

Abstract: Providing flexible transaction semantics and incorporating activities, data and agents are the key issues in workflow system development. Unfortunately, most of the commercial workflow systems lack the advanced features of transaction models, and an individual transaction model with specific emphasis lacks sufficient coverage for business process management. This report presents our solutions to the above problems in developing the Open Process Management System (OPMS) at HP Laboratories. OPMS is based on nested activity modeling with the following extensions and constraints: 'in-process open nesting' for extending closed/open nesting to accommodate applications that require improved process-wide concurrency without sacrificing top-level atomicity; 'confined open' as a constraint on both open and in-process open activities for avoiding the semantic inconsistencies in activity triggering and compensation; and 'two-phase remedy' as a generalized hierarchical approach for handling failures.

Imaging and workflow system

Abstract: An imaging and workflow method, and a system for processing information efficiently for a service industry, the system being particularly well suited for use in the cardholder service industry. The system includes support for document scanning, automated rules-based workcase processing, statistical reporting, document generation and document storage and retrieval. This method and system takes advantage of imaging technology to assist the user in scanning information into the system and software modules to improve the processing of workcases. The system also includes a database table that identifies to application processing logic the types and sequences of actions to be implemented for defined workcase types. The computer program utilized by the system is modularized in order to facilitate adding new functions into the system. These new functions are supported through entries in the database tables.