XML-enabled workflow management for e-services across heterogeneous platforms

Shegalov, German; Gillmann, Michael; Weikum, Gerhard

doi:10.1007/s007780100038

Cited by 55 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…workflow “mediation”, cf. Christophides et al , 2001; Shegalov et al , 2001) moving in similar directions, each emphasising other aspects of interrelating workflow resources. For integrating web services in WFM, IBM has developed a web services flow language (Leymann, 2001).…”

Section: Contracting Services Within Workflow Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing by contract

Klischewski

Wetzel

2005

Business Process Management Journal

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PurposeAims to show that workflow management needs to rethink its basis of discussion in order to meet today's challenges and to provide adequate IT support for heterogeneous workflow networks.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the need for flexibility in relating resources in workflow management is examined in more detail. Second, some approaches to managing workflows in heterogeneous networks are inspected and it is found that all of these improve flexibility on the basis of contracting services. Third, it is elaborated how processing by contract supports decentralized resource management through dynamically interrelating social and technical services driven by a cycle (“wheel”) of execution and monitoring, evaluation and demand, as well as selecting and contracting.FindingsConclusions are drawn for systems architecture and implementation to guide the design of internet‐enabled workflow support.Research limitations/implicationsImportant questions for the research agenda are: how can one enrich application‐oriented workflow modelling languages in order to describe processes as consisting of heterogeneous services? How should one design and implement workflow engines which enable the turning of the “wheel” with the support of integrating human activities and technical agency as workflow process services?Practical implicationsThe idea of processing by contract may lead to new workflow concepts and technology to meet the challenges of an internet economy based on the “pay as you go” principle.Originality/valueWhereas the workflow paradigm of the past may be phrased as processing by definition, i.e. process execution according to predefined process patterns and resource relations, the idea of processing by contract is suggested, i.e. a mode of process execution driven by recurrent process evaluation and service contracting.

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Section: Contracting Services Within Workflow Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing by contract

Klischewski

Wetzel

2005

Business Process Management Journal

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“…However, the main difficulty with such a scenario lies in the integration effort "behind" the central component. As discussed in [23] the handling might be very complex. Still, we depart from their approach in that we assign (again) an integration facilitator within each provider organization for hiding details of server connections.…”

Section: Sp-appmentioning

confidence: 99%

Serviceflow Beyond Workflow? Concepts and Architectures for Supporting Inter-Organizational Service Processes

Wetzel

Klischewski

2002

Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design

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With Serviceflow Management we put the service nature of inter-organizational processes into the center of modeling, design and architectures. The underlying conceptual distinction between the serviceflow, the portion of the process where the customer's concern is evaluated and cared for, and background processes, guides in (1) providers as well as designers to focus on service design and delivery, (2) to provide support for serviceflows with enhanced flexibility and service configuration and (3) to design service points where service workers and customers "meet". By this, the original workflow metaphor, which directs the design of process support from a mass production point of view, is questioned and replaced by a more suitable concept, which considers social and quality aspects in service delivery. Instance-based XML process representations and generic components and architectures for their exchange and for the provision of service tasks are presented, discussed, and exemplified by an e-health process.

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“…Although actors usually are human workers, other systems calling a service provided by ULTRAflow are also supported, such that the WfMS can be integrated into, e.g., an e-service infrastructure [24]. However, in this case methods for authentication and authorization specifically developed for e-services may be more appropriate [22].…”

Section: The Ultraflow Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design for Change: Evolving Workflow Specifications in ULTRAflow

Fent

Reiter

Freitag

2002

Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design

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Updating the specification of workflows on the fly in a workflow management system is currently considered an important topic in research as well as application. Yet, most approaches are either very simplistic, allowing only newly started workflows to take advantage of updated specifications, or they are complex, trying to transfer every active workflow from the old to the new schema. In the workflow management system ULTRAflow, updates to workflow specifications are handled by using a multi-version concurrency control protocol. This is facilitated by the specification language for workflows, which is rule based and therefore provides a natural partitioning of specifications into smaller units. The proposed method allows active, running workflows to partly use new specifications if this does not conflict with already executed sub-workflows. Moreover, an architecture which is also applicable in a distributed system is presented. While the method to update the specifications is discussed in the context of a workflow management system, it can also be applied in CORBA or EJB applications, or the now ubiquitous electronic services. The work described in this paper has been funded by the German Research Agency (DFG) under contract number Fr 1021/3-3.

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XML-enabled workflow management for e-services across heterogeneous platforms

Cited by 55 publications

References 27 publications

Processing by contract

Processing by contract

Serviceflow Beyond Workflow? Concepts and Architectures for Supporting Inter-Organizational Service Processes

Design for Change: Evolving Workflow Specifications in ULTRAflow

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