Workflow

About: Workflow is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 31996 publications have been published within this topic receiving 498339 citations.

Workflow process method and system for iterative and dynamic command generation and dynamic task execution sequencing including external command generator and dynamic task execution sequencer

Abstract: A computer-implemented task workflow management system is provided in which the workflow engines, the program execution means, the process execution rule and the business flow rules are external to the rule evaluator. The invention relates generally to task workflow management systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a workflow management system which can generate dynamically and iteratively program commands to execute external tools and workflow systems, and can vary task execution sequences dynamically by applying rules to generate next goal or next activity at run time. Business process solutions can be updated automatically and dynamically in response to changes, additions or deletions in any one environment, applications program, and/or change to business data as results of prior implementation of the business solutions. The execution sequences can be dynamically and iteratively updated in response to changes as a result of prior implementation of the business solutions.

Integrating operational and business support systems with a service delivery platform

Abstract: A service-oriented approach provides for an integration of components that would otherwise be considered different and unrelated components, such as runtime, business support systems (BSS), operational support systems (OSS), and third party components. Such integration allows messages to be transformed and passed between components as necessary to perform a particular task. For example, a BPEL workflow can be initiated upon receiving a user request through a network and gateway layer which will direct provisioning, activation, and processing via these various components. Identities can be managed across these various layers to provide for seamless end-to-end integration.

SwinDeW-a p2p-based decentralized workflow management system

Abstract: Workflow technology undoubtedly has been one of the most important domains of interest over the past decades, from both research and practice perspectives. However, problems such as potential poor performance, lack of reliability, limited scalability, insufficient user support, and unsatisfactory system openness are largely ignored. This research reveals that these problems are mainly caused by the mismatch between application nature, i.e., distributed, and system design, i.e., centralized management. Therefore, conventional approaches based on the client-server architecture have not addressed them properly so far. The authors abandon the dominating client-server architecture in supporting workflow because of its inherent limitations. Instead, the peer-to-peer infrastructure is used to provide genuinely decentralized workflow support, which removes the centralized data repository and control engine from the system. Consequently, both data and control are distributed so that workflow functions are fulfilled through the direct communication and coordination among the relevant peers. With the support of this approach, performance bottlenecks are likely to be eliminated while increased resilience to failure, enhanced scalability, and better user support are likely to be achieved. Moreover, this approach also provides a more open framework for service-oriented workflow over the Internet. This paper presents the authors' innovative decentralized workflow system design. The paper also covers the corresponding mechanisms for system functions and the Swinburne Decentralized Workflow prototype, which implements and demonstrates this design and functions

A query language for analyzing business processes execution

Abstract: The execution of a business process (BP) in today's enterprises may involve a workflow and multiple IT systems and services. Often no complete, up-to-date documentation of the model or correlation information of process events exist. Understanding the execution of a BP in terms of its scope and details is challenging specially as it is subjective: depends on the perspective of the person looking at BP execution. We present a framework, simple abstractions and a language for the explorative querying and understanding of BP execution from various user perspectives. We propose a query language for analyzing event logs of process-related systems based on the two concepts of folders and paths, which enable an analyst to group related events in the logs or find paths among events. Folders and paths can be stored to be used in follow-on analysis. We have implemented the proposed techniques and the language, FPSPARQL, by extending SPARQL graph query language. We present the evaluation results on the performance and the quality of the results using a number of process event logs.