Exterminating the Dynamic Change Bug: A Concrete Approach to Support Workflow Change

Adaptability has become one of the major research topics in the area of workflow management. Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. As a result, the workflow management system is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the workflow process is supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowed or handled outside of the workflow management system. In this paper, we focus on a notorious problem caused by workflow change: the dynamic change bug (Ellis et al.; Proceedings of the Conference on Organizational Computing Systems, Milpitas, California, ACM SIGOIS, ACM Press, New York, 1995, pp. 10–21). The dynamic change bug refers to errors introduced by migrating a case (i.e., a process instance) from the old process definition to the new one. A transfer from the old process to the new process can lead to duplication of work, skipping of tasks, deadlocks, and livelocks. This paper describes an approach for calculating a safe change region. If a case is in such a change region, the transfer is postponed.     

基于规则库的工作流流程文件转换方法

针对工作流流程定义文件之间需要相互转换的问题,提出了一种基于规则库的流程定义文件转换方法.该方法首先通过建立映射规则库采存储不同流程定义语言间相互转换的规则,然后在转换过程中动态查找规则库,获取当前流程定义转换所需要的规则,最后用获取的规则初始化转换引擎以实现流程定义文件的转换.采用上述方法建立了从XPDL(Xml process definition language)到BPEL(business process execution language)及BPEL到XPDL之间的转换规则库,运用该规则库完成了实例的相互转换.实验结果表明了该转换方法的可行性和有效性.     

改良的Public-To-Private方法在跨企业工作流建模中的应用

现有的应用在跨企业工作流中的Public-To-Private（P2P）方法存在两大缺陷,一是仅能使用投影继承;二是工作流实例只能从超类过程定义向子类过程定义转换.为了解决这两个缺陷,论文以Petri net作为建模工具,在P2P方法中引入了协议继承关系,规定了它的适用范围,使企业在扩展跨企业工作流时可以应用全部的四种基本路由分支.论文还提出了继承的转换规则的逆操作,使工作流实例能够在子类过程定义和超类之间双向转换.最后根据一个建模实例,说明新方法的应用.     

Multi-agent collaboration for B2B workflow monitoring

Business-to-business (B2B) applications environments are exceedingly dynamic and competitive. This dynamism is manifested in the form of changing process requirements and time constraints. However, current workflow management technologies have difficulties to solve the challenges problems, such as: how to deal with the dynamic nature of B2B commerce processes, how to manage the distributed knowledge and recourses, and how to reduce the transaction risk. In this paper, a collaborative multi-agent system has been proposed. Multiple intelligent agents in our system can work together not only to identify the workflow problems, but also to solve such problems, by applying business rules, such as re-organizing the procurement and the transaction processes, and making necessary workflow process changes.     

基于工作流技术的医院办公自动化系统

为了降低复杂流程的开发难度,提高应用系统的管理效率,提出基于工作流技术的医院办公自动化系统。依据工作流参考模型,实现工作流过程定义及交换接口、工作流客户应用程序接口以及系统管理和监控接口,该系统由流程定义、流程执行控制、流程监控3部分组成,提供表单设计、流程步骤及流转定义,支持复杂流程,可满足医院业务流程多样化的需要。     

管理过程控制系统：工作流思想的一种新的应用模式

提出的管理过程控制系统将工作流思想应用于较低层次的管理支撑层。它采用面向信息流框架的机制来定义、协调、监督和控制管理过程,并使系统本身能独立于应用系统而存在,从而解放了应用系统的开发环境,摆脱了复杂、动态的流程和传统工作流管理系统中受过程定义模型约束的限制。该系统还具有运行时间步协作、信息继承和基于过程实例的动态流程控制的功能,可以作为企业信息设施的一个基础部件,支持工作流在复杂过程管理环境中的应用。     

一种模型驱动的工作流过程定义途径

传统的工作流管理系统在互操作性，可复用性，可移植性和开发效率等方面遇到了挑战，MDA是解决上述挑战和问题的一种途径。在模型驱动的工作流管理系统中，工作流模型处于核心地位，本文首先给出了扩展的工作流元模型和基于Petri网的形式化工作流模型过程网。其次，运用模型驱动的途径，依据给出的工作流模型，本文提出了一种模型驱动的，用于快速构造工作流管理系统的框架。针对工作流过程模型，着重讨论了从基于EPC的过程CIM到基于过程网的过程PIM的转换（转换过程和转换规则），并以扩展的Petri网标注语言E-PNML规约了过程PIM。     

Automatic control of workflow processes using ECA rules

Changes in recent business environments have created the necessity for a more efficient and effective business process management. The workflow management system is software that assists in defining business processes as well as automatically controlling the execution of the processes. We propose a new approach to the automatic execution of business processes using event-condition-action (ECA) rules that can be automatically triggered by an active database. First of all, we propose the concept of blocks that can classify process flows into several patterns. A block is a minimal unit that can specify the behaviors represented in a process model. An algorithm is developed to detect blocks from a process definition network and transform it into a hierarchical tree model. The behaviors in each block type are modeled using ACTA formalism. This provides a theoretical basis from which ECA rules are identified. The proposed ECA rule-based approach shows that it is possible to execute the workflow using the active capability of database without users' intervention. The operation of the proposed methods is illustrated through an example process.     

Knowledge-based techniques to increase the flexibility of workflow management

This paper describes how knowledge-based techniques can be used to overcome problems of workflow management in engineering applications. Using explicit process and product models as a basis for a workflow interpreter allows us to alternate planning and execution steps, resulting in an increased flexibility of project coordination and enactment. To gain the full advantages of this flexibility, change processes have to be supported by the system. These require an improved traceability of decisions and have to be based on dependency management and change notification mechanisms. Our methods and techniques are illustrated by two applications: Urban land-use planning and software process modeling.     

Constraint-centric workflow change analytics

In a globalized economic environment with volatile business requirements, continuous process improvement needs to be done regularly in various organizations. However, maintaining the consistency of workflow models under frequent changes is a significant challenge in the management of corporate information services. Unfortunately, few formal approaches are found in the literature for managing workflow changes systematically. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for workflow change management through formal modeling of workflow constraints, leading to an approach called Constraint-centric Workflow Change Analytics (CWCA). A core component of CWCA is the formal definition and analysis of workflow change anomalies. We operationalize CWCA by developing a change anomaly detection algorithm and validate it in the context of procurement management. A prototype system based on an open-source rule engine is presented to provide a proof-of-concept implementation of CWCA.