Specification and design of workflow-driven hypertexts

2002

Abstract A critical point for developing successful information systems for distributed organisations is the need for integrating heterogeneous technologies and tools. This paper reports a case study of integrating two key enabling technologies, namely workflow and document management. Integration is achieved by combining several approaches, including software engineering and hypertexts.

Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work : the integration challenge the integration challenge - GROUP '97, 1997

This paper presents a hybrid approach for the support of workflows in a ministerial environment that integrates a Web-based interface into a groupware platform. A scenario of the application area is examined to identify the basic requirements for an adequate user support. The basic PoLffeam approach for the support of workflows by electronic circulation folders is introduced. Focal point of the paper is the design of the Web-based interface for the interaction with electronic circulation folders and its seamless integration into the groupware platform.

In these lecture notes we present the iTask system: a set of combinators to specify workflows in a pure functional language at a very high level of abstraction. Workflow systems are automated systems in which tasks are coordinated that have to be executed by either hu-mans or computers. The combinators that we propose support workflow patterns commonly found in commercial workflow systems. In addition, we introduce novel workflow patterns that capture real world require-ments, but that can not be dealt with by current systems. Compared with most of these commercial systems, the iTask system offers several further advantages: tasks are statically typed, tasks can be higher order, the combinators are fully compositional, dynamic and recursive work-flows can be specified, and last but not least, the specification is used to generate an executable web-based multi-user workflow application. With the iTask system, useful workflows can be defined which cannot be ex-pressed in other systems...

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1998

Work ow management systems provide functions for process modeling, implementation and automation. Many systems do not allow modeling organizational goals and relating these goals with the processes which enable them. The method OSSAD provides models and project management guidelines to this e ort. But this method is not su cient to fully support work ow management. In order to do so, we de ne Workey as an extension of OSSAD, to enable work ow speci cation, implementation and automation for the web.

Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science, 2013

This paper identifies the high value to researchers in many disciplines of having web-based graphical editors for scientific workflows and draws attention to two technological transitions: good quality editors can now run in a browser and workflow enactment systems are emerging that manage multiple workflow languages and support multilingual workflows. We contend that this provides a unique opportunity to introduce multilingual graphical workflow editors which in turn would yield substantial benefits: workflow users would find it easier to share and combine methods encoded in multiple workflow languages, the common framework would stimulate conceptual convergence and increased workflow component sharing, and the many workflow communities could share a substantial part of the effort of delivering good quality graphical workflow editors in browsers. The paper examines whether such a common framework is feasible and presents an initial design for a web-based editor, tested with a preliminary prototype. It is not a fait accompli but rather an urgent rallying cry to explore collaboratively a generic web-based framework before investing in many divergent individual implementations.

2007

Interface and the Workflow Engine of the Workflow Reference Model, defining a specification with Web Services. The Workflow Reference Model, developed by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), shows an architecture that standardizes the development of Workflow applications, in order to allowing interoperability among them. It defines five interfaces and specifies a set of WAPIs (Workflow Aplication Programming Interfaces) that define the functions of these interfaces like calls to APIs in a third-generation language, forcing to know specifically where an application is located to be able to invoke it. The Web Services are autonomous and independent services that are offered by means of the Web. Its main benefit is that they allow that the applications more modular, facilitating the reusability in different platforms and programming languages. This specification with Web Services improves the communication of Client's Applications with the Workflow Engine, favoring the user since he doesn't need to know the exact location of the application to invoke, and to the applications because they can vary its location in the web without implying any change in its invocation.

Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2001

Organizations deploy intranets to provide access to documents for those who use them. But the web of computing comprises more than just documents: people, tools, and processes are critical to organizational function. In particular, people may need guidance on how to perform tasks, as well as access to information necessary to carry out those tasks.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2007

Service composition is core to service oriented architectures. In the Web, mainstream composition is practiced in client-side or serverside mashups, such as providing visual widgets on top of Google Maps results. This paper presents an explicit, workflow based composition model for Web applications called Bite. In contrast with prior attempts to bring workflow capabilities to the Web environment, Bite can deal with data integration as well as interactive, asynchronous workflows with multiparty interactions, and is architected to support protocols currently in use by Web applications. The Bite development model is designed for simplicity and short development cycle by taking a scripting approach to workflow development.

Proceedings of the Tenth Workshop on Language Descriptions, Tools and Applications - LDTA '10, 2010

Workflow management systems guide and monitor tasks performed by humans and computers. The workflow specifications are usually expressed in special purpose (graphical) formalisms. These formalisms impose severe restrictions on what can be expressed. Modern workflow management systems should handle intricate data dependencies, offer a web-based interface, and should adapt to dynamically changing situations, all based on a sound formalism. To address these challenges, we have developed the iTask system, which is a novel workflow management system. We entirely embed the iTask specification language in a modern general purpose functional language, and generate a complete workflow application. In this paper we report our experiences in developing the iTask system. It not only inherits state-of-the-art programming language concepts such as generic programming and a hybrid static/dynamic type system from the host language Clean, but also offers a number of novel concepts to generate complex, real-world, multi-user, web based workflow applications.

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, 2006

While Web applications evolve towards ubiquitous, enterprise-wide or multi-enterprise information systems, their features must cover new requirements, such as the capability of managing complex processes spanning multiple users and organizations, by interconnecting software provided by different organizations. Significant efforts are currently being invested in application integration, to support the composition of business processes of different companies, so as to create complex, multi-party business scenarios. In this setting, Web applications, which were originally conceived to allow the user-to-system dialogue, are extended with Web services, which enable system-to-system interaction, and with process control primitives, which permit the implementation of the required business constraints. This paper presents new Web engineering methods for the high-level specification of applications featuring business processes and remote services invocation. Process-and service-enabled Web applications benefit from the high-level modeling and automatic code generation techniques that have been fruitfully applied to conventional Web applications, broadening the class of Web applications that take advantages of these powerful software engineering techniques. All the concepts presented in this paper are fully implemented within a CASE tool.