Partitioning rules for orchestrating mobile information systems

New mobile technologies such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi suffer from many limitations and problems, especially when they are used in combination, whereas they are quite stable in small networks. The lack of specialised mobile middleware requires new methods in the design and execution of mobile information systems. We propose a two-phase approach to manage a mobile business process by partitioning a given workflow into several workflows, with each one governed by a controller. In the first phase, we introduce synchronisation tasks between different controllers. In the second phase, we create for each controller a local process view. Thanks to added tasks, the overall execution of all local workflows achieve the same result as the original one. The mobile scenario and the necessity for more automation lead us to choose the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) as the language for the process definition.