Class Library Support for Workflow Environments and Applications

Workflow systems are receiving increased attention as they intend to facilitate the operations of enterprises by coordinating and streamlining business activities. The need for automated support and operational models that allow workflow applications to coordinate units of work across multiple servers-according to business defined rules and routes-is becoming critical for the proper management of such activities. In this paper, we describe a Transaction-Oriented Workflow Environment (TOWE) for programming workflow activities. The novelty of our approach resides in the proposed unified abstraction, class libraries, to support workflow activities. The fundamental concept used in the TOWE system is based on the symbiosis of object-oriented programming and interprocess communication concepts. In TOWE, the concurrency abstractions are represented by process objects, active objects acting as processes, which involve asynchronous, location-independent, and application specific process invocations.

[1]  Athman Bouguettaya,et al.  On Distributed Persistent Objects for Interoperable Data Stores , 1996, Inf. Sci..

[2]  Frederick H. Lochovsky,et al.  OASIS: a programming environment for implementing distributed organizational support systems , 1991, COCS '91.

[3]  Amit P. Sheth,et al.  Petri-net-based workflow management software , 1996 .

[4]  Jennifer Widom,et al.  Active Database Systems: Triggers and Rules For Advanced Database Processing , 1994 .

[5]  Gerhard Weikum,et al.  The Mentor project: steps towards enterprise-wide workflow management , 1996, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Data Engineering.

[6]  Terry Winograd,et al.  The Action Workflow Approach to Workflow Management Technology , 1993, Inf. Soc..

[7]  D. Hollingsworth The workflow Reference Model , 1994 .

[8]  Denis Caromel,et al.  Toward a method of object-oriented concurrent programming , 1993, CACM.

[9]  Satoshi Matsuoka,et al.  Object-Oriented Concurrent Reflective Languages can be Implemented Efficiently , 1992, OOPSLA.

[10]  J. Gregory Morrisett,et al.  Composing first-class transactions , 1994, TOPL.

[11]  Clarence A. Ellis,et al.  Modeling and Enactment of Workflow Systems , 1993, Application and Theory of Petri Nets.

[12]  Mike P. Papazoglou,et al.  On the Representation of Objects with Polymorphic Shape and Behaviour , 1994, ER.

[13]  Mostafa S Haghjoo,et al.  Transactional actors in cooperative information systems , 1995 .

[14]  Frederick H. Lochovsky,et al.  Supporting distributed office problem solving in organizations , 1986, TOIS.

[15]  Panos K. Chrysanthis,et al.  ACTA: The SAGA Continues , 1992, Database Transaction Models for Advanced Applications.

[16]  Gul A. Agha,et al.  Concurrent object-oriented programming , 1993, CACM.

[17]  Lily B. Mummert,et al.  Camelot and Avalon: A Distributed Transaction Facility , 1991 .

[18]  Bertrand Meyer,et al.  Systematic concurrent object-oriented programming , 1993, CACM.

[19]  Mike P. Papazoglou,et al.  TrActorS: a transactional actor system for distributed query processing , 1992, [1992] Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

[20]  Andreas Reuter,et al.  The ConTract Model , 1991, Database Transaction Models for Advanced Applications.

[21]  Andrzej Cichocki,et al.  Towards a Model for Multidatabase Transactions , 1992, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[22]  Michael Ranft,et al.  OBST — An Overview , 1992 .

[23]  Patrick C. K. Hung,et al.  CapBasED-AMS: a capability-based and event-driven activity management system , 1996, SIGMOD '96.

[24]  Stanley B. Zdonik,et al.  Specifying Flexible Tasks in a Multi-database , 1994, CoopIS.

[25]  Jean-Marc Geib,et al.  Eiffel classes for concurrent programming , 1991 .

[26]  Stephen M. Omohundro The Sather Language and Libraries , 1991, TOOLS.

[27]  Jack Dongarra,et al.  Pvm 3 user's guide and reference manual , 1993 .

[28]  Christoph Bussler,et al.  A general framework for the execution of heterogenous programs in workflow management systems , 1996, Proceedings First IFCIS International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems.

[29]  Ahmed K. Elmagarmid,et al.  Transaction Models for Advanced Database Applications , 1991 .

[30]  Zahir Tari,et al.  R-OK: a reflective model for distributed object management , 1995, Proceedings RIDE-DOM'95. Fifth International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering-Distributed Object Management.

[31]  Marc Shapiro,et al.  Structure and Encapsulation in Distributed Systems: The Proxy Principle , 1986, ICDCS.

[32]  Mike P. Papazoglou,et al.  A semantic meta-modelling approach to schema transformation , 1995, CIKM '95.

[33]  Ming-Chien Shan,et al.  RIDE-DOM '95, Fifth International Workshop on Research Issues in Data Engineering- Distributed Object Management : proceedings, March 6-7, 1995, Taipei, Taiwan , 1995 .

[34]  Barbara Liskov,et al.  Distributed programming in Argus , 1988, CACM.

[35]  E. B. Moss,et al.  Nested Transactions: An Approach to Reliable Distributed Computing , 1985 .