Workflow Data Patterns: Identification, Representation and Tool Support

Abstract

Workflow systems seek to provide an implementation vehicle for complex, recurring business processes. Notwithstanding this common objective, there are a variety of distinct features offered by commercial workflow management systems. These differences result in significant variations in the ability of distinct tools to represent and implement the plethora of requirements that may arise in contemporary business processes. Many of these requirements recur quite frequently during the requirements analysis activity for workflow systems and abstractions of these requirements serve as a useful means of identifying the key components of workflow languages. In this paper, we describe a series of workflow data patterns that aim to capture the various ways in which data is represented and utilised in workflows. By delineating these patterns in a form that is independent of specific workflow technologies and modelling languages, we are able to provide a comprehensive treatment of the workflow data perspective and we subsequently use these patterns as the basis for a detailed comparison of a number of commercially available workflow management systems, workflow standards and web-service composition languages.

Service-Oriented Reference Architecture for Smart Cities

“…Workflows can be used to compose multiple services, possibly provided by different systems, together into a single process which can be executed [53]. These workflows could result in complex behaviour such as reacting to triggers or controlling data flows [54], [55] and allow the system to scale as demand increases. One such example of a workflow might be a collection of simulations that model the behaviour of some system and provide decision support or what-if analysis [10].…”

Norm Compliance in Business Process Modeling

“…Thus, it seems to us that PCL offers a rich, compact and holistic framework for business process compliance in such a way as we also can use a rule engine for PCL as a process engine. To understand the full extent of the proposed approach we plan a comprehensive comparison with control flow patterns [12], data patterns [13], and the declarative patterns of [14].…”

Lightweight Process Modeling for Virtual Enterprise Process Collaboration

“…Russell et.al. present 40 data-related patterns for processaware information systems [17] which are divided into four distinct groups: data visibility, data interaction, data transfer and data-based routing. Data visibility relates to the extent and manner in which data elements can be viewed by the various activities of a process.…”

“…According to the definition of the data flow patterns in [17], the data operators and data refresh strategies in data-oriented mashups only cover data transfer, data interaction, and data routing. Data visibility is not covered by data-oriented mashups.…”