XML–Based Schema Definition for Support of Interorganizational Workflow

Abstract

The full potential of the web as a medium for electronic commerce can be realized only when multiple partners in a supply chain can route information among themselves in a seamless way. Commerce on the Internet is still far from being "friction-free" because business partners cannot exchange information about their business processes in an automated manner. In this paper, we propose the design for an eXchangeable Routing Language (XRL) using XML syntax. XML (eXtendible Markup Language) is a means for trading partners to exchange business data electronically. The novel contribution of our work is to show how XML can also be used to describe workflow process schemas to support flexible routing of documents in the Internet environment. The design of XRL is grounded in Petri nets, which is a wellknown formalism. By using this formalism, it is possible to analyze correctness and performance of workflows described in XRL. Architectures to facilitate inter-operation through loose and tight integration are also discussed. Examples illustrate how this approach can be used for implementing interorganizational electronic commerce applications. As a proof of concept we have also developed XRL/flower, a prototype implementation of a workflow management system based on XRL.

On the refactoring of activity labels in business process models

“…Languages, like BPMN, EPCs, or UML Activity Diagrams, that can be mapped to free-choice Petri nets can be checked for soundness in quadratic time [17], structured models in linear time [18]. There are also techniques available for checking the correctness of data flow [19,20,21], satisfiability of constraints on the resource perspective [22,23,24], or the interoperability of cross-organizational workflows [25]. These correctness aspects are well understood and efficiently supported by tools for a wide range of process model classes.…”

“…The label part between preposition of and the next preposition is treated as a business object. Then, the analysis of action-noun (ing) labels follows (lines [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Analysis of these labels resembles the analysis of labels of noun phrase style.…”

Business Process Driven Matching of Partner Profiles to Resource Requirements

“…Resource-based analysis is subject of related research in collaborative networks [14]. Since resource requirements can only be identified in business processes if tasks contain quantitative and qualitative requirements; these requirements enclose properties of resources which may be assigned to tasks [10,11].…”

Process Logic for Verifying the Correctness of Business Process Models

“…Graph reduction techniques (Sadiq and Orlowska 2000) can detect a limited set of process anomalies because the set of the developed reduction rules is not complete (van der Aalst et al 2002). The matrix-based workflow verification approach (Choi andZhao 2002, 2003) has not addressed how to handle process models that contain OR relationships among activities that are included in process modeling formalisms (Bi and Zhao 2004b;Mayer et al 1995;van der Aalst and Kumar 2003).…”