A Flexible Workflow Model for Process-Oriented Applications

This paper introduces definition and enactment models to characterize workflows. The proposed knowledge model provides concepts for modeling activities, data used by such activities, agents, and ordering operators and synchronization modes used for specifying activities dependencies. The behavior model provides dimensions that characterize workflow enactment. Both models are currently implemented in our workflow management system called AFLOWS. The originality of our approach is related to its flexibility as different enactment models can be associated to a workflow simply by giving values to dimensions according to application needs. Such an approach and system provide a suitable support for specifying and enacting workflow processes that may be useful today to describe and monitor process-oriented applications (i.e., large web-based applications that run across wide area networks and multiple enterprises).