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Showing papers on "Workflow published in 2008"


Proceedings ArticleDOI
22 Dec 2008
TL;DR: This work provides a characterization of workflows from five diverse scientific applications, describing their composition and data and computational requirements, and describes a workflow generator that produces synthetic, parameterizable workflows that closely resemble these workflows.
Abstract: Researchers working on the planning, scheduling and execution of scientific workflows need access to a wide variety of scientific workflows to evaluate the performance of their implementations. We describe basic workflow structures that are composed into complex workflows by scientific communities. We provide a characterization of workflows from five diverse scientific applications, describing their composition and data and computational requirements. We also describe the effect of the size of the input datasets on the structure and execution profiles of these workflows. Finally, we describe a workflow generator that produces synthetic, parameterizable workflows that closely resemble the workflows that we characterize. We make these workflows available to the community to be used as benchmarks for evaluating various workflow systems and scheduling algorithms.

590 citations


Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: This chapter investigates existing workflow scheduling algorithms developed and deployed by various Grid projects and introduces allocating suitable resources to workflow tasks.
Abstract: Workflow scheduling is one of the key issues in the management of workflow execution. Scheduling is a process that maps and manages execution of inter-dependent tasks on distributed resources. It introduces allocating suitable resources to workflow tasks so that the execution can be completed to satisfy objective functions specified by users. Proper scheduling can have significant impact on the performance of the system. In this chapter, we investigate existing workflow scheduling algorithms developed and deployed by various Grid projects.

447 citations


Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Dec 2008
TL;DR: The results show that for Montage, a workflow with short job runtimes, the virtual environment can provide good compute time performance but it can suffer from resource scheduling delays and widearea communications.
Abstract: This paper explores the use of cloud computing for scientific workflows, focusing on a widely used astronomy application-Montage. The approach is to evaluate from the point of view of a scientific workflow the tradeoffs between running in a local environment, if such is available, and running in a virtual environment via remote, wide-area network resource access. Our results show that for Montage, a workflow with short job runtimes, the virtual environment can provide good compute time performance but it can suffer from resource scheduling delays and widearea communications.

393 citations


Proceedings ArticleDOI
12 Mar 2008
TL;DR: Analysis of ethnographic data collected at a hospital using an autonomous delivery robot to examine how organizational factors affect the way its members respond to robots and the changes engendered by their use provides design guidelines for the development of robots for organizations.
Abstract: Robots are becoming increasingly integrated into the workplace, impacting organizational structures and processes, and affecting products and services created by these organizations. While robots promise significant benefits to organizations, their introduction poses a variety of design challenges. In this paper, we use ethnographic data collected at a hospital using an autonomous delivery robot to examine how organizational factors affect the way its members respond to robots and the changes engendered by their use. Our analysis uncovered dramatic differences between the medical and post-partum units in how people integrated the robot into their workflow and their perceptions of and interactions with it. Different patient profiles in these units led to differences in workflow, goals, social dynamics, and the use of the physical environment. In medical units, low tolerance for interruptions, a discrepancy between the perceived cost and benefits of using the robot, and breakdowns due to high traffic and clutter in the robot's path caused the robot to have a negative impact on the workflow and staff resistance. On the contrary, post-partum units integrated the robot into their workflow and social context. Based on our findings, we provide design guidelines for the development of robots for organizations.

329 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2008
TL;DR: This paper focuses on organizational mining and presents techniques to discover organizational models and social networks and shows how these models can assist in improving the underlying processes.
Abstract: Process mining has emerged as a way to analyze processes based on the event logs of the systems that support them. Today's information systems (e.g., ERP systems) log all kinds of events. Moreover, also embedded systems (e.g., medical equipment, copiers, and other high-tech systems) start producing detailed event logs. The omnipresence of event logs is an important enabler for process mining. The primary goal of process mining is to extract knowledge from these logs and use it for a detailed analysis of reality. Lion's share of the efforts in this domain has been devoted to control-flow discovery. Many algorithms have been proposed to construct a process model based on an analysis of the event sequences observed in the log. As a result, other aspects have been neglected, e.g., the organizational setting and interactions among coworkers. Therefore, we focus on organizational mining. We will present techniques to discover organizational models and social networks and show how these models can assist in improving the underlying processes. To do this, we present new process mining techniques but also use existing techniques in an innovative manner. The approach has been implemented in the context of the ProM framework and has been applied in various case studies. In this paper, we demonstrate the applicability of our techniques by analyzing the logs of a municipality in the Netherlands.

328 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
17 Nov 2008-Sensors
TL;DR: This article proposes a comprehensive approach for automated determination of 3D city models from airborne acquired point cloud data, based on the assumption that individual buildings can be modeled properly by a composition of a set of planar faces.
Abstract: Three dimensional city models are necessary for supporting numerous management applications. For the determination of city models for visualization purposes, several standardized workflows do exist. They are either based on photogrammetry or on LiDAR or on a combination of both data acquisition techniques. However, the automated determination of reliable and highly accurate city models is still a challenging task, requiring a workflow comprising several processing steps. The most relevant are building detection, building outline generation, building modeling, and finally, building quality analysis. Commercial software tools for building modeling require, generally, a high degree of human interaction and most automated approaches described in literature stress the steps of such a workflow individually. In this article, we propose a comprehensive approach for automated determination of 3D city models from airborne acquired point cloud data. It is based on the assumption that individual buildings can be modeled properly by a composition of a set of planar faces. Hence, it is based on a reliable 3D segmentation algorithm, detecting planar faces in a point cloud. This segmentation is of crucial importance for the outline detection and for the modeling approach. We describe the theoretical background, the segmentation algorithm, the outline detection, and the modeling approach, and we present and discuss several actual projects.

327 citations


01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: Workflow nets, a particular class of Petri nets, have become one of the standard ways to model and analyze workflows as mentioned in this paper, and they are used as an abstraction of the workflow that is used to check the so-called soundness property.
Abstract: Workflow nets, a particular class of Petri nets, have become one of the standard ways to model and analyze workflows. Typically, they are used as an abstraction of the workflow that is used to check the so-called soundness property. This property guarantees the absence of livelocks, deadlocks, and other anomalies that can be detected without domain knowledge. Several authors have proposed alternative notions of soundness and have suggested to use more expressive languages, e.g., models with cancellations or priorities. This paper provides an overview of the different notions of soundness and investigates these in the presence of different extensions of workflow nets. We will show that the eight soundness notions described in the literature are decidable for workflow nets. However, most extensions will make all of these notions undecidable. These new results show the theoretical limits of workflow verification. Moreover, we discuss some of the analysis approaches described in the literature.

323 citations


DOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: This thesis proposes a new approach to workow management systems that can facilitate contemporary business processes in a better way by enabling a better balance between exibility and support.
Abstract: Many organizations use information technology to support various aspects of their business processes: the operational aspect, collaboration between employees, etc Workow management systems aim at supporting the operational aspect of complex business processes by using process models to automate the ordering of activities (ie, ow of work) The term `support' here relates to the ability of workow management systems to control the execution of business processes Contemporary workow management systems lack exibility, ie, the system controls in detail how employees should execute business processes While work- ow management systems deal well with predictable business processes, they are not able to handle unforeseen situations, which occur often in real-life business processes Although employees mostly have the knowledge and experience that enables them to deal with exceptional situations, they are not able to apply the right action because the system enforces the standard procedure of work This often has various undesired consequences: work is done `outside' the system, work cannot be done in the appropriate way, dissatisfaction of employees, resistance towards the system, etc As a result, workow management systems cannot be used properly if it is necessary that employees control the execution of business processes This thesis proposes a new approach to workow management systems that can facilitate contemporary business processes in a better way by enabling a better balance between exibility and support As opposed to traditional approaches which use procedural process models to explicitly (ie, step-by-step) specify the execution procedure, the proposed approach aims at the specification of business processes using constraints, ie, processes are modeled by rules that should be followed while executing business processes Constraint-based models implicitly specify the execution procedure by means of constraints: any execution that does not violate constraints is possible In addition to proposing a constrainbased approach, a concrete language for specification of constraints is given and the proof-of-concept prototype declare is described On the one hand, constraint-based management systems are exible, which allows employees to deal with specific (e/g/ unpredicted) situations in the most adequate way On the other hand, constraint-based management systems can support employees when it comes to aspects of business processes that are too complex for humans to handle There are several ways in which constraintbased management systems can provide both exibility and support

255 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
01 Aug 2008
TL;DR: This paper describes the design and implementation of MOTEUR, a workflow engine that fulfills the need for well-defined data composition strategies on the one hand and for a fully parallel execution on the other.
Abstract: Workflows offer a powerful way to describe and deploy applications on grid infrastructures. Many workflow management systems have been proposed but there is still a lack of a system that would allow both a simple description of the dataflow of the application and an efficient execution on a grid platform. In this paper, we study the requirements of such a system, underlining the need for well-defined data composition strategies on the one hand and for a fully parallel execution on the other. As combining those features is not straightforward, we then propose algorithms to do so and we describe the design and implementation of MOTEUR, a workflow engine that fulfills those requirements. Performance results and overhead quantification are shown to evaluate MOTEUR with respect to existing comparable workflow systems on a production grid.

208 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An approach to identify so-called configurable elements of a workflow modeling language and to add configuration opportunities to workflow models is presented in this paper.
Abstract: Workflow modeling languages allow for the specification of executable business processes. They, however, typically do not provide any guidance for the adaptation of workflow models, i.e. they do not offer any methods or tools explaining and highlighting which adaptations of the models are feasible and which are not. Therefore, an approach to identify so-called configurable elements of a workflow modeling language and to add configuration opportunities to workflow models is presented in this paper. Configurable elements are the elements of a workflow model that can be modified such that the behavior represented by the model is restricted. More precisely, a configurable element can be either set to enabled, to blocked, or to hidden. To ensure that such configurations lead only to desirable models, our approach allows for imposing so-called requirements on the model's configuration. They have to be fulfilled by any configuration, and limit therefore the freedom of configuration choices. The identification of configurable elements within the workflow modeling language of YAWL and the derivation of the new "configurable YAWL" language provide a concrete example for a rather generic approach. A transformation of configured models into lawful YAWL models demonstrates its applicability.

202 citations


Patent
09 Jun 2008
TL;DR: In this article, a workflow manager handles the communication between a workflow-enabled provider and a workflow enabled client, maintaining a directory of clients, translating a transaction from a provider into multiple transactions suitable for the client, and handling security.
Abstract: A workflow manager handles the communication between a workflow-enabled provider and a workflow-enabled client. The workflow manager maintains a directory of clients, translates a transaction from a provider into multiple transactions suitable for the client, and handles security. In one embodiment, the workflow manager connects with the workflow-enabled client by registration and with the workflow-enabled provider by advertising and activation. Subsequent communications between the workflow manager and the workflow-enabled provider and the workflow-enabled client are with a request/response protocol. The workflow manager also comprises data storage for storing data for transmission to the workflow-enabled client or the workflow-enabled provider, and workflow storage for storing information related to registered clients. The present invention also includes a number of novel methods including a method for a method for registering a client and a method for activating a provider.

Reference EntryDOI
15 Sep 2008
TL;DR: The event-condition-action (ECA) paradigm to specify reactive behavior and its enabling tools and triggers which are available in commercial DBMS are discussed and the need for formal reasoning about active database behavior is motivated.
Abstract: Active database systems extend traditional database systems with the capability to react to various events, which can be either generated internally or externally. We discuss the event-condition-action (ECA) paradigm to specify reactive behavior and its enabling tools and triggers which are available in commercial DBMS. We motivate the need for formal reasoning about active database behavior and present the desirable global properties of termination and confluence. Then we discuss the various semantic dimensions of triggers that relate to their instantiation, condition evaluation, scheduling, and execution and we discuss their coupling with the underlying transaction model. The main features of prototype active database systems and of commercially available DBMS are reviewed. We introduce some of the challenges that face active database systems in novel, highly heterogeneous, distributed, and dynamic driven application domains such as workflow systems, streaming database, and moving objects databases. Finally, we give a brief overview of a new paradigm, (ECA)'2, which is geared toward settings in which both the event detection and the condition evaluation are done in distributed fashion and are continuous in nature. Keywords: active databases; triggers; event-condition-action; semantic dimensions; composite events; coupling; conflict resolution; children triggers

Proceedings ArticleDOI
19 May 2008
TL;DR: This paper examines some of the issues in the area of data management related to workflow creation, execution, and result management in the context of the entire workflow lifecycle.
Abstract: Scientific workflows play an important role in today's science. Many disciplines rely on workflow technologies to orchestrate the execution of thousands of computational tasks. Much research to-date focuses on efficient, scalable, and robust workflow execution, especially in distributed environments. However, many challenges remain in the area of data management related to workflow creation, execution, and result management. In this paper we examine some of these issues in the context of the entire workflow lifecycle.

Patent
15 Feb 2008
TL;DR: In this article, security assessment and vulnerability testing of software applications is performed based at least in part on application metadata in order to determine an appropriate assurance level and associated test plan that includes multiple types of analysis.
Abstract: Security assessment and vulnerability testing of software applications is performed based at least in part on application metadata in order to determine an appropriate assurance level and associated test plan that includes multiple types of analysis. Steps from each test are combined into a 'custom' or 'application-specific' workflow, and the results of each test may then be correlated with other results to identify potential vulnerabilities and/or faults.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work addresses the challenge to record uniform and usable provenance metadata that meets the domain needs while minimizing the modification burden on the service authors and the performance overhead on the workflow engine and the services.
Abstract: The increasing ability for the sciences to sense the world around us is resulting in a growing need for datadriven e-Science applications that are under the control of workflows composed of services on the Grid. The focus of our work is on provenance collection for these workflows that are necessary to validate the workflow and to determine quality of generated data products. The challenge we address is to record uniform and usable provenance metadata that meets the domain needs while minimizing the modification burden on the service authors and the performance overhead on the workflow engine and the services. The framework is based on generating discrete provenance activities during the lifecycle of a workflow execution that can be aggregated to form complex data and process provenance graphs that can span across workflows. The implementation uses a loosely coupled publish-subscribe architecture for propagating these activities, and the capabilities of the system satisfy the needs of detailed provenance collection. A performance evaluation of a prototype finds a minimal performance overhead (in the range of 1% for an eight-service workflow using 271 data products).

Patent
08 Aug 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a workflow-based mobile device management user interface for defining and managing functions implemented on mobile devices, using a pluggable workflow framework to achieve mobile devices management externalization.
Abstract: Embodiments of a workflow-based user interface for defining and managing functions implemented on mobile devices are described. A method under an embodiment utilizes a workflow-based mobile device management user interface. The method utilizes a pluggable workflow framework to achieve mobile device management externalization. The mobile device management platform is required to implement a set of basic action blocks that are used as primitives for further management policy composition. The method provides a development environment integrated with a mobile device management platform that allows assembling management (monitoring) primitives into meaningful management policies without changes to a core management platform infrastructure. The method claims addition of new primitives deployed as add-on products to enable new and advanced management policies, best integration practices with a carrier operational support system. The method enables debugging and tracing mobile device management policies in real time to minimize development and testing efforts.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Dec 2008
TL;DR: This paper provides a high-level framework for comparing the systems based on their control flow and data flow properties with a view of both informing future research in the area by academic researchers and facilitating the selection of the most appropriate system for a specific application task by practitioners.
Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a growing trend in designing and using workflow systems with a focus on supporting the scientific research process in bioinformatics and other areas of life sciences. The aim of these systems is mainly to simplify access, control and orchestration of remote distributed scientific data sets using remote computational resources, such as EBI web services. In this paper we present the state of the art in the field by reviewing six such systems: Discovery Net, Taverna, Triana, Kepler, Yawl and BPEL. We provide a high-level framework for comparing the systems based on their control flow and data flow properties with a view of both informing future research in the area by academic researchers and facilitating the selection of the most appropriate system for a specific application task by practitioners.

Journal IssueDOI
TL;DR: This paper illustrates the application-level provenance information generated Wings during workflow creation and the refinement provenance by the Pegasus mapping system for execution over grid computing environments and shows how this information is used in answering the queries of the First Provenance Challenge.
Abstract: Our research focuses on creating and executing large-scale scientific workflows that often involve thousands of computations over distributed, shared resources. We describe an approach to workflow creation and refinement that uses semantic representations to (1) describe complex scientific applications in a data-independent manner, (2) automatically generate workflows of computations for given data sets, and (3) map the workflows to available computing resources for efficient execution. Our approach is implemented in the Wings-Pegasus workflow system and has been demonstrated in a variety of scientific application domains. This paper illustrates the application-level provenance information generated Wings during workflow creation and the refinement provenance by the Pegasus mapping system for execution over grid computing environments. We show how this information is used in answering the queries of the First Provenance Challenge. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Apr 2008
TL;DR: This paper formalizes the notion of user views, demonstrates how they can be used in provenance queries, and gives an algorithm for generating a user view based on which tasks are relevant for the user.
Abstract: Workflow systems have become increasingly popular for managing experiments where many bioinformatics tasks are chained together. Due to the large amount of data generated by these experiments and the need for reproducible results, provenance has become of paramount importance. Workflow systems are therefore starting to provide support for querying provenance. However, the amount of provenance information may be overwhelming, so there is a need for abstraction mechanisms to help users focus on the most relevant information. The technique we pursue is that of "user views". Since bioinformatics tasks may themselves be complex sub-workflows, a user view determines what level of sub-workflow the user can see, and thus what data and tasks are visible in provenance queries. In this paper, we formalize the notion of user views, demonstrate how they can be used in provenance queries, and give an algorithm for generating a user view based on which tasks are relevant for the user. We then describe our prototype and give performance results. Although presented in the context of scientific workflows, the technique applies to other data-oriented workflows.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A formal data model and complete digital workflow for the documentation of this process in 3D using the prehistoric site of Paliambela Kolindros, Greece, as a case study is discussed.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: The effort focused on understanding how CND analysts inspect raw data and build their comprehension into a diagnosis or decision, especially in cases requiring data fusion and correlation across multiple data sources.
Abstract: This paper reports on investigations of how computer network defense (CND) analysts conduct their analysis on a day-to-day basis and discusses the implications of these cognitive requirements for designing effective CND visualizations. The supporting data come from a cognitive task analysis (CTA) conducted to baseline the state of the practice in the U.S. Department of Defense CND community. The CTA collected data from CND analysts about their analytic goals, workflow, tasks, types of decisions made, data sources used to make those decisions, cognitive demands, tools used and the biggest challenges that they face. The effort focused on understanding how CND analysts inspect raw data and build their comprehension into a diagnosis or decision, especially in cases requiring data fusion and correlation across multiple data sources. This paper covers three of the findings from the CND CTA: (1) the hierarchy of data created as the analytical process transforms data into security situation awareness; (2) the definition and description of different CND analysis roles; and (3) the workflow that analysts and analytical organizations engage in to produce analytic conclusions.

Book
17 Jan 2008
TL;DR: This research examined how the Calendaring and Scheduling Marketplace is Joining the Web Revolution and the role of Workflow Technology in this process, as well as some case studies in collaboration.
Abstract: Foreword. Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Groupware-The Changing Environment David Coleman. What Does Groupware Really Do? Definitions of Groupware. The Challenges of Groupware. Four Trends for Collaboration. The Main Message-Coleman's Law. Why Groupware? Why People Buy Groupware. Groupware versus the Internet. Groupware Technology and the IT Architecture. Some Case Studies in Collaboration. Groupware and Re-engineering. Groupware and De-engineering. Using Groupware to Learn About Groupware: The Business Transformation Game. The Future: An Architecture for the Connected Organization. Summary. Bibliography. Biographies. 2. Collaborating on the Internet and Intranets David Coleman, Abby Hyman Kutner. Research Methodology. Key Findings from the Survey. How Firms Collaborate Using Internet and Intranet Tools. Applications for Web-Based Collaboration. Why Are Companies Using Intranets as well as LAN-Based Groupware? Issues and Implications. The Future State. Conclusion. Definitions Used in the Research. Biographies. 3. The Evolution of Web-Based Conferencing and Workflow David Coleman. LAN and Web-Based Workflow. Background: Workflow Reports. Web-Based Workflow Products. Conclusions. Data Conferencing for the Internet and Intranets. Building the Business Case (Strategies). Product Standards, Functions, and Features. Summary and Conclusions. Biographies. 4. Electronic Mail and Messaging Chuck Stegman. Introduction and Overview. Terminology. Components. Environments. Architectures. Standards. APIs. Issues. Mobile. Products. Messaging. Group Scheduling. Forms and Workflow. Faxing. Paging. Telephony. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The Future and Conclusions. Biography. 5. Calendaring and Scheduling: Managing the Enterprise's Most Valuable, Non-Renewable Resource-Time Chris Knudsen, David Wellington. The Calendaring and Scheduling Market. How Calendaring and Scheduling Contributes to Groupware Strategy. An Overview of Calendaring and Scheduling Product Classes. Architectural Evolution of Scheduling Products. Interoperability. How the Calendaring and Scheduling Marketplace Is Joining the Web Revolution. Implementation for the Intranet. What's Next-Extending to the Internet. Conclusion. Calendaring and Scheduling Products Resource List. Biography. 6. Workflow: Applying Automation to Group Processes Ronni T. Marshak. Where Workflow Fits in Groupware. The Role of Workflow Technology. Redesigning Processes for Competitive Advantage. The Growing Scope of Workflow Applications. Categories of Workflow: Useful Guidelines. Workflow Applications as a Continuum. A Basic Taxonomy of Workflow Applications. Product Considerations. Approach to Workflow. Designing Business Processes: BPR. Stages of Process Automation: Business Process Definition. Stages of Process Automation. The Rs and Ps of Workflow. Workflow Routing. Where the Data Fit: Enacting the Process. Workflow Automation Tools: Development Tools and Resulting Applications. Workflow Interoperability Standards. Where Is Workflow Being Implemented? Organizational and Business Factors of Workflow. Barriers to Implementing Workflow: Customers Aren't Buying Workflow. Evaluating Workflow Products: The Buyer's Guide. Workflow Market New in the Industry. The Future of Workflow: Likely Changes in Current Trends. 7A. Electronic Meetings as Today's Presentations David Coleman. What Is an Electronic Meeting? How and When Are EMSs Used? How Are EMSs Classified as Part of Groupware? Case Study: The Real Benefits of Electronic Meeting Systems. Perceived Risks and EMS. Conclusion. Bibliography. Biography. 7B. When You Really Must Have Them: Face-to-Face Meetings Using Keypad Electronic Meeting Systems William A. Flexner, Kimbal L. Wheatley. Why Keypad Technology? What Is a Keypad EMS? What Are the Benefits of a Keypad EMS? Designing the Keypad EMS into a Meeting Process. Conclusion: A Growing Market Acceptance. Biographies. 7C. How To Facilitate Distributed Meetings Using EMS Tools Julia Szerdy, Michael R. McCall. Collaboration from Your Desktop and across the World. Roles And Responsibilities In A Distributed Meeting. The Technology-EMS Tools For Distributed Meetings. How To Facilitate Distributed Meetings with EMS Tools. Examples and Applications. Frequently Asked Questions. Conclusions. Bibliography. Biography. 7D. The Virtual Office Work-Space: GroupSystems Web and Case Studies Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr., Robert O. Briggs, Nicholas C. Romano, Jr., Daniel Mittleman. Group Systems Defined. GroupSystems Web: GSWeb as a Collaboration Environment. GroupSystems Case Studies. Cultural Changes. Conclusion. Bibliography. Biographies. 7E. Using Meetingware and Facilitators: Guidelines and Case Studies Jana Markowitz. Guidelines for Using Meetingware. Case Studies. Internal Facilitators vs. Consultants. Conclusion. Biography. 8. Collaborative Presentation Technologies: Meetings, Presentations, and Collaboration Dion Blundell. The Case for Collaboration. New Dimensions for Collaborative Presentations. Meeting Tools For Collaborative Presentations. Making Collaborative Presentation Technologies Part of the Meeting. The Standards and Transmission Media Environment. The Future Of Collaborative Presentations. Acknowledgments. Bibliography. Biography. 9. Desktop Videoconferencing Christine Perey. Establishing a Need for Real-Time Visual Technology. When to Deploy Desktop Videoconferencing and Real-time Collaboration. How to Deploy Real-time Technologies in Enterprise. Essential Real-Time Conferencing Background and Terms. An Overview of Digital Video and Audio Capture and Compression. Preparing an IP Network for Desktop Videoconferencing. Alternative All-Digital Videoconferencing Networks. Conclusion. Appendix A: Products for Desktop Videoconferencing over LANs and Intranets. 10. Deploying Second-Generation Intranets with Lotus Notes Jeff Papows. What Is Notes? Notes Is Shared Databases. Notes Is a Messaging and Groupware Infrastructure. Notes Is a Platform for Developing and Deploying High Value Intranet and Internet Business Applications. Cost of Ownership: Notes vs. Intranets. Enterprise Knowledge Management, Distributed Learning, Developing the Extended Enterprise, and Building Effective Teams. Conclusion. Biography. 11. Novell and the Groupware Market Stewart Nelson. Collaborative Computing Environment (CCE) Framework Elements. GroupWise 5. GroupWise Solutions. Novell and Intranets. Foundation Products for GroupWise 5. GroupWise Development Environment. Competitive Environment. Shaping the Future for Customers. Biography. 12. TeamWARE: Managing the Transition to Intranet-based Groupware and Messaging Mika Enberg. Why TeamWARE? Messaging-A Brief History and Explanation. TeamWARE Messaging. Groupware. TeamWARE and the Internet. Conclusion. Biography. 13. Increasing Business Performance with Internet Collaboration Services: HP's Communication & Collaboration Strategy Raul Mujica. How Business Benefits From Communication and Collaboration (C&C). What C&C Means to HP. HP Internet Collaboration Services (ICS). Future Directions. Biography. 14. The Divergence of Two Worlds: Oracle's InterOffice John Bartlett. The Evolution of Groupware. Groupware and Database Management. Inside InterOffice. The InterOffice Document Management Server. The InterOffice Workflow Server. Open Programming Interfaces. InterOffice and Intranets. Database Servers That Manage Many Different Data Types. Collaboration. Electronic Commerce. Oracle InterOffice in Use. Futures. 15. Designing Groupware: A Management Primer Geoffrey E. Bock, David A. Marca. Introduction. Identifying Groupware Situations. A Design Process for Groupware. Enabling Capabilities for Groupware. Successful Deployment of Groupware. How Groupware Systems Evolve and Change. 16. Groupware at Big Six Consulting Firms: How Successful Was It? Andrew S. Clark, Charles E. Downing, David Coleman. Researching the Big Six: Goals, Participants, and Procedures. Forces Driving the Big Six. The Need for Knowledge. The Role of Groupware at Consultancies. Challenges Faced in Groupware Deployment. Lessons Learned from Groupware Deployment. Changes and Benefits from Groupware Deployment. How Successful Was It? Where Is Groupware Heading at the Big Six? Conclusion. Appendix. Bibliography. Information Services. Biographies. 17. Groupware & Reengineering: The Human Side of Change Gerald O'Dwyer, Art Giser, Ed Lovett. Introduction. Background. The Two Cs of Groupware: Collaboration and Communication. The First "C": Collaboration. The Second "C": Communication. A Closer Look At Groupware Products. Conclusion. Bibliography. Biographies. 18. Applying Groupware to the Architectural Design and Construction Industry: PRC's Genesis Strategy Frank A. Lancione. The Genesis of Genesis. That Which Is and That Which Will Be: The Genesis Strategy. The Theory Behind the Practice. Implementation Issues. Genesis Visionaries/Genesis Visions. Conclusion. Biography. 19. Groupware in Hardware and Software Development Environments Charles Grantham, Judy Carr, David Coleman. The Industry view on Software Development. A Failure to Communicate! The Maturity Model. Into the Wilderness. Studies in Early Success. Over the Horizon. Bibliography. Biographies. 20. Groupware, Knowledge Creation and Competitive Advantage Ellen Hongo, Gordon Stone. Knowledge Is the Key. Knowledge = Money. Knowledge Is Power! Groupware and Knowledge Management. What Do We Know About Knowledge? Malthus Got It Wrong. Knowledge Creation for Competitive Advantage. Groupware Will Affect Organizational Structure. The "Learning Organization" and Groupware. How Groupware Enabled Knowledge Creation Contributes to Wealth Creation. Getting to Action from Insight More Rapidly. A Glimpse of the Future-Comprehensive Groupware Support for Knowledge Creation. Barriers to Success. References. Collaborative Resources. The Collaborative Strategies Bookshelf. Conference, Symposia, and Academic Proceedings. Technical/Trade Publications. Conferences. Index.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The implementation of a workflow that fulfills the requirements for small and high throughput users, and includes the monitoring of data for continuous quality improvement by the sequencing staff, is implemented.
Abstract: Optimizing and monitoring the data flow in high-throughput sequencing facilities is important for data input and output, for tracking the status of results for the users of the facility, and to guarantee a good, high-quality service. In a multi-user system environment with different throughputs, each user wants to access his/her data easily, track his/her sequencing history, analyze sequences and their quality, and apply some basic post-sequencing analysis, without the necessity of installing further software. Recently, Fiocruz established such a core facility as a "technological platform". Infrastructure includes a 48-capillary 3730 DNA Sequence Analyzer (Applied Biosystems) and supporting equipment. The service includes running samples for large-scale users, performing DNA sequencing reactions and runs for medium and small users, and participation in partial or full genome projects. We implemented a workflow that fulfills these requirements for small and high throughput users. Our implementation also includes the monitoring of data for continuous quality improvement (reports by plate, month and user) by the sequencing staff. For the user, different analyses of the chromatograms, such as visualization of good quality regions, as well as processing, such as comparisons or assemblies, are available. So far, 180 users have made use of the service, generating 155,000 sequences, 35% of which were produced for the BCG Moreau-RJ genome project. The pipeline (named ChromaPipe for Chromatogram Pipeline) is available for download by the scientific community at the url http://bioinfo.pdtis.fiocruz.br/ChromaPipe/. The support for assembly is also configured as a web service: http://bioinfo.pdtis.fiocruz.br/Assembly/.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A heuristic that offers guidance for the creation and evaluation of process designs in administrative settings and can be used to select from several alternatives the process design that is strongly cohesive and weakly coupled is proposed.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
09 Jun 2008
TL;DR: This paper proposes an alternative approach to storing lineage information captured as a workflow process using a space and query efficient interval representation for dependency graphs and shows how to transform arbitrary workflow processes into graphs that can be stored using such representation.
Abstract: Data lineage and data provenance are key to the management of scientific data. Not knowing the exact provenance and processing pipeline used to produce a derived data set often renders the data set useless from a scientific point of view. On the positive side, capturing provenance information is facilitated by the widespread use of workflow tools for processing scientific data. The workflow process describes all the steps involved in producing a given data set and, hence, captures its lineage. On the negative side, efficiently storing and querying workflow based data lineage is not trivial. All existing solutions use recursive queries and even recursive tables to represent the workflows. Such solutions do not scale and are rather inefficient. In this paper we propose an alternative approach to storing lineage information captured as a workflow process. We use a space and query efficient interval representation for dependency graphs and show how to transform arbitrary workflow processes into graphs that can be stored using such representation. We also characterize the problem in terms of its overall complexity and provide a comprehensive performance evaluation of the approach.

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: An advanced workflow of an object-based image analysis approach where the objects themselves are altered constantly in order to move from object primitives in an early stage towards objects of interest in a final stage of the analysis.
Abstract: This research describes an advanced workflow of an object-based image analysis approach. In comparison to the existing two-staged workflow where typically a segmentation step is followed by a classification step, a new workflow is illustrated where the objects themselves are altered constantly in order to move from object primitives in an early stage towards objects of interest in a final stage of the analysis. Consequently, this workflow can be called “object-oriented,” due to the fact that the objects are not only used as information carriers but are modelled with the continuous extraction and accumulation of expert knowledge. For better demonstration, an existing study on single tree detection using laser scanning data is exploited to demonstrate the theoretical approach in an authentic environment.

Patent
30 Jan 2008
TL;DR: In this paper, the integration of workflow with a project management system that includes project segments, which are processes that can be defined and controlled by workflow routes, is discussed, where the relationship between the workflow routes can maintain the relationships between the project segments.
Abstract: The present invention relates to workflow systems and methods. In one embodiment, the invention relates to integration of a calendar system with a workflow system where a calendar event can initiate a workflow by sending a message to a form route manager. The completion of a workflow or step in the workflow can result in sending a message to a calendar system to generate an event. In another embodiment, the invention relates to the integration of workflow with a project management system that includes project segments, which are processes that can be defined and controlled by workflow routes. The project management system sends a message to the workflow system to initiate workflow and the workflow system sends a message to the project management system, for example, at the completion of the workflow route. The relationship between the workflow routes can maintain the relationship between the project segments. If the relationships between project segments change, the relationship between the workflow routes changes without added effort.

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Jan 2008
TL;DR: The state of the art for flexible business process management systems and criteria for comparing them are presented.
Abstract: In competitive and evolving environments only organizations which can manage complexity and can respond to rapid change in an informed manner can gain a competitive advantage During the early 90's, workflow technologies offered a transversal integration capacity to the enterprise applications. Today, to "integrate " enterprise applications -and the activities they support- into business processes is not sufficient. The architecture of this integration should also be flexible. Enterprise requirements highlight flexible and adaptive processes whose execution can evolve (i) according to situations that cannot always be prescribed, and/or (ii) according to business changes (organizational, process improvement, strategic ...). More recent works highlight requirements in term of flexible and adaptive workflows, whose execution can evolve according to situations that cannot always be prescribed. This paper presents the state of the art for flexible business process management systems and criteria for comparing them.

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A mapping from Workflow Nets (WF-nets) to BPEL is provided, which builds on the rich theory of Petri nets and can also be used to map other languages onto BPEL.
Abstract: The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) has emerged as the de facto standard for implementing processes. Although intended as a language for connecting web services, its application is not limited to cross-organizational processes. It is expected that in the near future a wide variety of process-aware information systems will be realized using BPEL. While being a powerful language, BPEL is difficult to use. Its XML representation is very verbose and only readable for the trained eye. It offers many constructs and typically things can be implemented in many ways, e.g., using links and the flow construct or using sequences and switches. As a result only experienced users are able to select the right construct. Several vendors offer a graphical interface that generates BPEL code. However, the graphical representations are a direct reflection of the BPEL code and not easy to use by end-users. Therefore, we provide a mapping from Workflow Nets (WF-nets) to BPEL. This mapping builds on the rich theory of Petri nets and can also be used to map other languages (e.g., UML, EPC, BPMN, etc.) onto BPEL. In addition to this we have implemented the algorithm in a tool called WorkflowNet2BPEL4WS.

Journal IssueDOI
TL;DR: Instead of specifying provenance explicitly with a workflow model, ES3 extracts provenance information automatically from arbitrary applications by monitoring their interactions with their execution environment, which assembles them into provenance graphs.
Abstract: The Earth System Science Server (ES3) project is developing a local infrastructure for managing Earth science data products derived from satellite remote sensing. By ‘local,’ we mean the infrastructure that a scientist uses to manage the creation and dissemination of her own data products, particularly those that are constantly incorporating corrections or improvements based on the scientist's own research. Therefore, in addition to being robust and capacious enough to support public access, ES3 is intended to be flexible enough to manage the idiosyncratic computing ensembles that typify scientific research. Instead of specifying provenance explicitly with a workflow model, ES3 extracts provenance information automatically from arbitrary applications by monitoring their interactions with their execution environment. These interactions (arguments, file I-O, system calls, etc.) are logged to the ES3 database, which assembles them into provenance graphs. These graphs resemble workflow specifications, but are really reports—they describe what actually happened, as opposed to what was requested. The ES3 database supports forward and backward navigation through provenance graphs (i.e. ancestor-descendant queries), as well as graph retrieval. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.