Workflow management systems (WFMS) are enjoying increasing popular ity due to their ability to coordinate and streamline complex organizational processes within organizations of all sizes. Organizational processes are de scriptions of an organization's activities engineered to fulfill its mission such as completing a business contract or satisfying a specific customer request. Gaining control of these processes allows an organization to reengineer and improve each process or adapt them to changing requirements. The goal of WFMSs is to manage these organizational processes and coordinate their execution. was demonstrated in the first half The high degree of interest in WFMSs of the 1990s by a significant increase in the number of commercial products (once estimated to about 250) and the estimated market size (in combined $2 billion in 1996. Ensuing maturity product sales and services) of about is demonstrated by consolidations during the last year. Ranging from mere e-mail based calendar tools and flow charting tools to very sophisticated inte grated development environments for distributed enterprise-wide applications and systems to support programming in the large, these products are finding an eager market and opening up important research and development op portunities. In spite of their early success in the market place, however, the current generation of systems can benefit from further research and develop ment, especially for increasingly complex and mission-critical applications.

First book on the topic Leading researchers review and discuss current state-of-the-art and recent developments in workflow systems

Klappentext

Workflow management systems enjoy increasing popularity due to their ability to coordinate and streamline complex organizational processes within organizations of all sizes. Control of these processes allows an organization to reengineer and improve or adapt them. Interest in workflow management systems was demonstrated in the early 1990s by an increased number of commercial products in an estimated $2 billion market. This book addresses recent advances in workflow management systems. Based on a NATO workshop held in 1997, it is an integrated collection of papers by leading international researchers. Topics emphasized include interoperability, Internet technologies to improve system capabilities, scalable and dynamic cooperation technologies, and workflow system prototypes.

Inhalt
Workflow Management: State of the Art Versus State of the Products.- 1. Introduction.- 1.1 Background.- 1.2 Workflow Systems.- 2. Workflow Products.- 2.1 Current Status.- 2.2 Industry Trends.- 3. Workflow Research.- 3.1 Transactional Workflow.- 3.2 Distributed Workflow Execution.- 3.3 Dynamic Workflow.- 4. Conclusions.- A Distributed Workflow and Product Data Management Application for the Construction of Large Scale Scientific Apparatus.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Background.- 3. General Architecture and Design.- 4. Data Distribution Philosophy.- 5. Workflow Management in CRISTAL.- 6. Workflow System Design.- 7. Coping with Dynamic Change.- 8. Conclusions and Project Status.- Workflow Applications to Research Agenda: Scalable and Dynamic Work Coordination and Collaboration Systems.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Agenda for Current and Future Research.- 3. Application Driven Motivation and Requirements.- 3.1 Scalability.- 3.2 Adaptive and Dynamic Workflows.- 3.3 Integral Support for Collaboration.- 4. METEOR2 WFMS and its Support for Scalability.- 4.1 Workflow Design and Application Building in METEOR2.- 4.2 The Runtime Code Generator.- 4.3 METEOR2 Runtime Support System.- 4.4 The ORBWork Workflow Enactment System.- 4.5 Scalability of ORBWork.- 5. New Challenges to Support Dynamic and Collaborative Work.- 5.1 Work Coordination and Collaboration System.- 5.2 WCCS Design.- 5.3 WCCS Architecture.- 5.4 Work Coordination and Collaboration Engine.- 6. Conclusions.- Design and Implementation of a Distributed Workflow Management System: METUFIow.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Process Model and the METUFIow Definition Language:.- MFDL.- 3. Guard Generation for Distributed Scheduling.- 3.1 Semantics of the Block Types Using ACTA Formalism.- 3.2 Guard Construction Steps.- 4. METUFIow Architecture.-5. Guard Handlers in METUFIow.- 6. Task Handling in METUFIow.- 7. Worklist Management in METUFIow.- 8. History Management in METUFIow.- 9. OTS Based Transaction Manager.- 10. Correctness Issues in METUFIow.- 10.1 Concurrency Control in METUFIow.- 10.2 Future Considerations for Concurrency Control in METUFIow.- 11. Conclusions.- HP Workflow Research: Past, Present, and Future.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Stage 1: Advanced Feature Enhancements.- 3. Stage 2: Enterprise Business Process Management System.- 3.1 The Requirements.- 3.2 OpenPM Overview.- 3.3 OpenPM Application Development Facilities.- 3.4 An Application Example.- 4. Stage 3: Internet-Based Service Process Management System.- 4.1 FlowJet Overview.- Reducing Escalation-Related Costs in WFMSs.- 1. Introduction.- 2. System Model.- 2.1 Workflow Schema.- 2.2 Deadlines and Escalations.- 2.3 Assumptions.- 3. Dynamic Deadline Adjustment (DDA).- 4. Preemptive Escalation.- 5. Experimental Evaluation.- 5.1 Simulation Model.- 5.2 Experimental Setup.- 5.3 Simulation Results.- 6. Related Work.- 7. Conclusions.- The Workflow Management System Panta Rhei.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Concepts of Panta Rhei.- 2.1 Classification of Workflows.- 2.2 Basic Concepts.- 2.3 Additional Features.- 2.4 Open Architecture.- 3. Workflow Description Language.- 3.1 Workflow Specification.- 3.2 Execution of WDL.- 4. Architecture and Implementation.- 5. Conclusions.- The WASA Approach to Workflow Management for Scientific Applications.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Workflow Modeling.- 2.1 Workflow Modeling in Business Applications.- 2.2 Workflow Modeling in Scientific Applications.- 2.3 Case Study: Scientific Workflows in Molecular Biology.- 3. Dynamic Change Operations.- 3.1 Anticipated Dynamic Change.- 3.2 Ad-hoc Dynamic Change.- 3.3 Related Work on Dynamic Change.- 4. The WASA Architecture.- 4.1 The WASA Layers.- 5. The WASA Prototype.- 5.1 General Considerations.- 5.2 System Architecture.- 6. Conclusions and Future Work.- Security Enforcement in Activity Management Systems.- 1. Introduction.- 1.1 Related Work.- 2. Secure CapBasED-AMS.- 2.1 Architecture of Secure CapBasED-AMS.- 3. Security Requirements for Activity Specification and Decomposition.- 3.1 Security Control in Activity Specification.- 3.2 Security Constraints Specification.- 4. Framework for Activity Execution.- 4.1 Activity Graph.- 4.2 ECA Rules.- 4.3 Activity Coordinator.- 4.4 Communication Between the Activity Coordinator and PSAs.- 4.5 Task and Event Logging.- 4.6 Exception Condition Handling and Error Recovery.- 5. Security Enforcement During Task Execution.- 5.1 Security Policy Decider and Secure PSA.- 5.2 Enforcement of Task Oriented Modeling of Security.- 6. Open Problems and Summary.- Towards a Platform for Distributed Application Development.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Motivation.- 2.1 Application Example.- 2.2 Software Solutions.- 2.3 Kernel Functionality for Distributed Systems.- 3. The OPERA Kernel.- 3.1 Architecture.- 3.2 Process Management: Model.- 3.3 Transactional Execution Guarantees.- 3.4 Availability and Scalability.- 3.5 Externalized Database Functionality.- 4. Application Examples.- 4.1 High-Level Object Management (HLOM).- 4.2 Distributed Object Management (DOM).- 5. Conclusions.- The Integration of Workflow Systems and Collaboration Tools.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Concerns and Theoretical Foundations.- 2.1 Coordination Versus Collaboration.- 2.2 The Situated Nature of Work.- 2.3 Organizational Structures and Flows.- 2.4 Empirical Evidence.- 3. Orchestra: a Testbed Environment.- 3.1 Objectives.- 3.2 Participants and Activities.- 4. Workflow Systems and Technology.- 4.1 A Sample of Workflow Systems.- 4.2 Groupware Environments and Workflow Support Mechanisms.- 4.3 Wo…