Extending the Liaison Workflow Model and Engine to Support Different Signature Purposes

Currently, many software systems are developed in offices geographically distributed in different locations. Furthermore, it is also common for a software system development project contracting to different software houses. These contracted software development projects, very ojien, are further sub-contracted to some other software houses. These software development modes can be supported and managed by a good distributed workflow systems. Signatures are playing an important role in-these software development modes. Most workflow systems, at best, can only support digital signatures. Digital signatures with public key cryptosystem are limited to authentication, integriQ, conjdentiality and nonrepudiation. The wide variety of signature purposes such as authorization or multiple signatures in group decision making are not supported explicitly by most workflow systems. We have studied different kinds of signature in software development and workflow systems. This paper discusses the problems and solutions of incorporating these signatures in distributed workflow engine, in particular; the Liaison Workjlow Engine, to support the contemporary modes of software developments. *Copyright 1999 IEEE. Published in the Proceedings of 1999 Asia Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 99), December 8-10, 1999 in Takamatsu, Japan. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprinthepublish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works, must he obtained from the IEEE. Contact: Manager, Copyrights and Permissions / IEEE Service Center / 445 Hoes Lane / P.O. Box 1331 / Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331, USA. Telephone: + Intl. 908-5623966.