Workflow Process Definition Research Articles

Study on Integrated Scientific Research Management Information System in Higher Vocational College Based on Workflow

For the purpose to realize information collection, collation, transfer, tracking and execution required by Hunan Urban Construction College to carry out the function of scientific research and management, and through the re-definition of the workflow process definition, we combine the modeling technology of Petri net and the workflow technology to design the amendment of the workflow process and the storage mechanism. Also we design the data structure of the workflow engine, hoping to make breakthrough on both thoughts and measures for the realization of the research management & information system.

Self-managed workflow process execution

Current workflow management systems require fundamental enhancements to their process models and architectures to support dynamic business processes in fast-changing environments. In particular, late-binding mechanisms need to be introduced into the routing and decision steps in workflow process definitions to optimise high-level objectives based on business metrics. In this paper, we introduce a new type of node – choice node – to be used in place of route nodes when needed and the required framework for performing dynamic path selection, resource allocation and work queue prioritisation.

A Method for Semantic Verification of Workflow Processes Based on Petri Net Reduction Technique

Verification is meaningful for ensuring the correctness of workflow process definition. This paper focuses on semantic verification method, solving the problem of conflict checking under the combination of control flow, data flow and resource dimensions of workflow processes. Firstly, a formal model for process description— 3DWFN is defined responding to the requirement of semantic verification, and then reduction rules accomplishing semantic verification are stated in details based on 3DWFN nets. Finally, their advantages on semantic verification layer are compared with the existing reduction rules in the literatures.

Workflow-Based Knowledge Flow Modeling and Control

Knowledge flow is the knowledge creation, distribution, and reuse among participants. In knowledge intensive organizations, business process control and knowledge assess management are closely related to each other. Workflow management is an important technology for business process control. Yet knowledge management mechanisms can not be represented by current workflow process definition meta models. An innovative extended workflow process definition meta model is first proposed for integrating the above two aspects. Based on that, modeling and control of knowledge flows are studied. A knowledge flow modeling approach is proposed by using five kinds of knowledge flow components to represent knowledge distribution and reuse, cooperation and communication among participants. To deal with dynamic elements in knowledge flows, an adaptive knowledge flow control approach with corresponding algorithms is proposed based on resource constraints, changes of knowledge requirements, and time constraints. This paper presents a beneficial approach for the effective integration of workflow and knowledge management technologies.

A REUSE-ORIENTED WORKFLOW DEFINITION LANGUAGE

This paper presents a new formalism for workflow process definition, which combines research in programming languages and in database systems. This formalism is based on creating a library of workflow building blocks, which can be progressively combined and nested to construct complex workflows. Workflows are specified declaratively, using a simple high level language, which allows the dynamic definition of exception handling and events, as well as dynamically overriding workflow definition. This ensures a high degree of flexibility in data and control flow specification, as well as in reuse of workflow specifications to construct other workflows. The resulting workflow execution environment is well suited to supporting cooperative work.

Inheritance of workflows: an approach to tackling problems related to change

Inheritance is one of the key issues of object-orientation. The inheritance mechanism allows for the definition of a subclass which inherits the features of a specific superclass. When adapting a workflow process definition to specific needs (ad-hoc change) or changing the structure of the workflow process as a result of reengineering efforts (evolutionary change), inheritance concepts are useful to check whether the new workflow process inherits some desirable properties of the old workflow process. Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. As a result, a workflow management system is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the workflow processes are supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowed or handled outside of the workflow management system. In this paper, we propose inheritance-preserving transformation rules for workflow processes and show that these rules can be used to avoid problems such as the “dynamic-change bug.” The dynamic-change bug refers to errors introduced by migrating a case (i.e., a process instance) from an old process definition to a new one. A transfer from an old process to a new process can lead to duplication of work, skipping of tasks, deadlocks, and livelocks. Restricting change to the inheritance-preserving transformation rules guarantees transfers without any of these problems. Moreover, the transformation rules can also be used to extract aggregate management information in case more than one version of a workflow process cannot be avoided.

Set-based access conflict analysis of concurrent workflow definition

An error-comprising workflow definition might provoke serious problems to an enterprise especially when it is involved with mission critical business processes. Concurrency of workflow processes is known as one of the major sources causing such an invalid workflow process definition. So the conflicts caused by concurrent workflow processes should be considered deliberately when defining concurrent workflow processes. If we can analyze the conflicts immanent in concurrent workflow definition prior to runtime, it will be very helpful to business process designers and many other users of workflow management systems. In this paper, we propose a set-based access conflict analysis method to detect all the possible access conflicts prior to the execution of the workflow process. The method is composed of two phases. In the first phase, it generates set constraints from a structured workflow definition. In the second phase, it solves the set constraints obtained from the first phase. Using the information about potential conflicts detected by our analysis, workflow designers can prevent the serious problems that can be raised by conflicts in runtime and they can convince whether their workflow definitions are free from such conflicts or not.

Diagnosing Workflow Processes using Woflan

Workflow management technology promises a flexible solution for business-process support facilitating the easy creation of new business processes and modification of existing processes. Unfortunately, today’s workflow products have no support for workflow verification. Errors made at design-time are not detected and result in very costly failures at run-time. This paper presents the verification tool Woflan. Woflan analyzes workflow process definitions downloaded from commercial workflow products using state-of-the-art Petri-net-based analysis techniques. This paper describes the functionality of Woflan emphasizing diagnostics to locate the source of a design error. Woflan is evaluated via two case studies, one involving 20 groups of students designing a complex workflow process and one involving an industrial workflow process designed by Staffware Benelux. The results are encouraging and show that Woflan guides the user in finding and correcting errors in the design of workflows. Received 27 September 2000; revised 8 March 2001

A PETRI-NETS-BASED APPROACH FOR WORKFLOW AND PROCESS AUTOMATION

Based on the workflow management coalition (WFMC) standard and component software technologies, this paper addresses our Petri-nets-based approach for workflow and process automation. Petri nets provide graphical and mathematical formalisms for work-flow process definition and analysis. In this paper, we will present how to use Petri nets and a toolkit NCUPN (National Central University Petri Nets toolkit) for process definition and analysis. NCUPN is a Petri nets modeling and analysis toolkit developed to help software engineers in drawing and doing analysis. Once a workflow process is drawn using NCUPN, analysis can be done automatically. In this paper, we will demonstrate how to use NCUPN to analyze behavioral properties of workflow process, such as deadlock, liveness, safety, and starvation.