Study of the Reusable Workflow System

Reusable development can promote the productivity of large workflow systems development. However it has not precluded developers from designing workflow system tailoring to users’ specific needs, though workflow management coalition standardized the five kinds of abstract interfaces of workflow enactment service in workflow reference model. Specific business process characteristics are still supported by specific workflow system. Method of software reuse is introduced to enhance reusability of the core of workflow system, i.e. workflow engine. In component environment, general functionalities of workflow engine are abstracted from business component, resulting in that the reusability of business component is extended into workflow engine. So two aspects are considered, i.e. component-based business processes development and reusable workflow engine development. The proposed approach is supported by a set of composition methods and reuse strategies. Through application and comparison, we show that different business requirements are met by reusing the workflow engine. [The Journal of American Science. 2005;1(2):51-60].