Title: DynaFlow: a dynamic inter-organisational workflow management system

Authors: Jie Meng, Stanley Y.W. Su, Herman Lam, Abdelsalam Helal, Jingqi Xian, Xiaoli Liu, Seokwon Yang

Addresses: Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA. ' Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA. ' Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA. ' Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA. ' Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA. ' Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA. ' Database Systems R&D Center, CSE 470, Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-6125, USA

Abstract: As the global marketplace becomes more and more competitive, business organisations often need to team up and operate as a virtual enterprise to utilise the best of their resources for achieving their common business goals. As the business environment of a virtual enterprise is highly dynamic, it is necessary to develop a workflow management technology that is capable of handling dynamic workflows across enterprise boundaries. This paper describes a Dynamic Workflow Model (DWM) and a dynamic workflow management system (DynaFlow) for modelling and controlling the execution of inter-organisational business processes. DWM enables the specification of dynamic properties associated with a business process model. It extends the underlying model of the WfMC|s WPDL by adding connectors, events, triggers and rules as its modelling constructs. It also encapsulates activity definitions and allows web service (or e-service) requests to be included as a part of the activity specification. Using DWM as the underlying model, DynaFlow makes use of an Event-Trigger-Rule (ETR) server to trigger rules during the enactment of a workflow process to enforce business rules and policies and/or to modify the process model at run-time. A constraint-based, dynamic service binding mechanism is used to dynamically bind web service requests to web services that satisfy the requirements of the requests.

Keywords: dynamic workflow model; DWM; dynamic workflow management; web services; e-services; constraint specification; business event; business rules; dynamic service binding; virtual enterprise; business process management; inter-organisational business processes; process modelling; business process integration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBPIM.2006.010024

International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, 2006 Vol.1 No.2, pp.101 - 115

Published online: 08 Jun 2006 *

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