Workflow

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

Fundamentals of control flow in workflows

Abstract: Although workflow management emerged as a research area well over a decade ago, little consensus has been reached as to what should be essential ingredients of a workflow specification language. As a result, the market is flooded with workflow management systems, based on different paradigms and using a large variety of concepts. The goal of this paper is to establish a formal foundation for control-flow aspects of workflow specification languages, that assists in understanding fundamental properties of such languages, in particular their expressive power. Workflow languages can be fully characterized in terms of the evaluation strategy they use, the concepts they support, and the syntactic restrictions they impose. A number of results pertaining to this classification will be proven. This should not only aid those developing workflow specifications in practice, but also those developing new workflow engines.

Sentinel-1 GRD Preprocessing Workflow

Abstract: The Copernicus Programme has become the world’s largest space data provider, providing complete, free and open access to satellite data, mainly acquired by Sentinel satellites. Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data have improved spatial resolution and high revisit frequency, making them useful for a wide range of applications. While few research applications need Sentinel-1 Ground Range Detected (GRD) data with few corrections applied, a wider range of users needs products with a standard set of corrections applied. In order to facilitate the exploitation of Sentinel-1 GRD products, there is the need to standardise procedures to preprocess SAR data to a higher processing level. A standard generic workflow to preprocess Copernicus Sentinel-1 GRD data is presented here. The workflow aims to apply a series of standard corrections, and to apply a precise orbit of acquisition, remove thermal and image border noise, perform radiometric calibration, and apply range Doppler and terrain correction. Additionally, the workflow allows spatially snapping of Sentinel-1 GRD products to Sentinel-2 MSI data grids, in order to promote the use of satellite virtual constellations by means of data fusion techniques. The presented workflow allows the production of a set of preprocessed Sentinel-1 GRD data, offering a benchmark for the development of new products and operational down-streaming services based on consistent Copernicus Sentinel-1 GRD datasets, with the aim of providing reliable information of interest to a wide range of communities.

Workflow exception patterns

Abstract: This paper presents a classification framework for workflow exception handling in the form of patterns. This framework is independent of specific modelling approaches or technologies and as such provides an objective means of delineating the exception-handling capabilities of specific workflow systems. It is subsequently used to assess the level of exceptions support provided by eight commercial workflow systems and business process modelling and execution languages. On the basis of these investigations, we propose a graphical, tool-independent language for defining exception handling strategies in workflows.

The ADEPT project: a decade of research and development for robust and flexible process support

Abstract: This paper gives insights into the ADEPT project. Its target was to develop a next generation process management technology, which is by orders of magnitudes more powerful and flexible than contemporary process management systems. The ADEPT technology should provide advanced features and properties within one system, which seem to exclude each other, but which are required for the support of a broad spectrum of processes: ease-of-use for end users and system developers, high flexibility through the support of non-trivial ad-hoc deviations at the process instance level, quick implementation of process changes through process schema evolution, and correctness guarantees enabling robust execution of implemented processes. This paper describes the background and the real-world cases which motivated our research. It further explains the technological challenges we faced, describes the solutions we elaborated, and discusses the current status of the ADEPT project.

Method and apparatus for structuring and managing the participatory evaluation of documents by a plurality of reviewers

Abstract: A method for structuring the process of participatory document evaluation by a plurality of reviewers utilizing a feed-forward synchronization schema defined as a workflow graph (52) construct. The workflow graph construct allows one to define efficient document evaluation strategies that take advantage of the inherent parallelism within a business process, and take into account the data dependencies exhibited by the business process. Independent aspects of each document are evaluated in parallel, and a stage evaluation is started when all required data (including data provided by other reviewers) is available. The workflow graph construct assembles together a set of workflow objects (review (46), roles (48), stages (50), document (44)), and associates a set of functional properties to each of them. The topology of the workflow graph describes the synchronization schema, while the functional properties provide additional flexibility and further refine the evaluation strategy. A method for managing the process of participatory document evaluation by a plurality of reviewers utilizing a programmed computer system. Documents to be reviewed are prepared by a set of preparers, and are stored into a database (38). Reviewers participate in the review process by evaluating aspects of the document within their area of expertise. Depending on the information in each individual document, a set of reviewers is notified that the document is ready for their review. Each reviewer is notified at the time appropriate for his/her role via electronic mail by a workflow manager (30).