Paper Info
Title
Design for Change: Evolving Workflow Specifications in ULTRAflow
Abstract
Updating the specification of workflows on the fly in a workflow management system is currently considered an important topic in research as well as application. Yet, most approaches are either very simplistic, allowing only newly started workflows to take advantage of updated specifications, or they are complex, trying to transfer every active workflow from the old to the new schema. In the workflow management system ULTRAflow, updates to workflow specifications are handled by using a multi-version concurrency control protocol. This is facilitated by the specification language for workflows, which is rule based and therefore provides a natural partitioning of specifications into smaller units. The proposed method allows active, running workflows to partly use new specifications if this does not conflict with already executed sub-workflows. Moreover, an architecture which is also applicable in a distributed system is presented. While the method to update the specifications is discussed in the context of a workflow management system, it can also be applied in CORBA or EJB applications, or the now ubiquitous electronic services.
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1007/3-540-47961-9_36
Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering
Keywords
Field
DocType
multi-version concurrency control protocol,specification language,active workflow,workflow management system,updated specification,evolving workflow specifications,important topic,ejb application,new specification,new schema,rule based,concurrency control,management system,distributed system
Specification language,Workflow technology,Concurrency control,Computer science,Document management system,Windows Workflow Foundation,Workflow engine,Workflow management system,Workflow,Distributed computing
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
3-540-43738-X
14
1.49
References 
Authors
16
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alfred Fent1203.07
Herbert Reiter2141.49
Burkhard Freitag325282.44