An Analysis of Transactional Workflow Support

2002

Abstract Workflows have generally been accepted as a means to model and support processes in complex organizations, be they interactive or completely automated. The fact that these processes require robustness and clear semantics has generally been observed and has lead to the combination of workflow and transaction concepts. Many variations on this combination exist, leading to many approaches to transactional workflow support.

Modern Database Systems: The Object …, 1994

The basic transaction model has evolved over time to incorporate more complex transaction structures and to selectively modify the atomicity and isolation properties. In this chapter we discuss the application of transaction concepts to activities that involve coordinated execution of multiple tasks (possibly of di erent t ypes) over di erent processing entities. Such applications are referred to as transactional work ows. In this chapter we discuss the speci cation of such w ork ows and the issues involved in their execution.

1997

Abstract: Work ow management systems (WFMSs) are nding wide applicability in small and large organizational settings. Advanced transaction models (ATMs) focus on maintaining data consistency and have provided solutions to many problems such as correctness, consistency, and reliability in transaction processing and database management environments.

1999

In this short paper, we outline the workflow management systems research in the Information Systems division at the University of Twente. We discuss the two main themes in this research: architecture design and advanced transaction management. Attention is paid to the coverage of these themes in the context of the completed Mercurius and WIDE projects and in the new CrossFlow project. In the latter project, contracts are introduced as a new theme to support electronic commerce aspects in workflow management.

Using the results that were expressed in the formalisms in [19] and our works [5], the paper intend to present some considerations on the workflow and workflow design under a large context: transactional systems, transactional workflows and web services. Our previous work dialed with a multi-agent system for reengineering failed workflows.

1999

Abstract We present an approach to global transaction management in workflow environments. The transaction mechanism is based on the well-known notion of sagas, but extended to deal with arbitrary process structures including cycles and savepoints that allow partial compensation. We present a formal specification of the transaction model and transaction management mechanisms in set and graph theory, providing clear, unambiguous transaction semantics.

1997

Workflow management applications require advanced transaction management that is not offered by traditional database systems. For this reason, a number of extended transaction models has been proposed in the past. None of these models seems completely adequate, though, because workflow management requires different transactional semantics on different process levels. In the WIDE ESPRIT project, a two-layer transaction management approach has been adopted to cope with this problem.

2001

Abstract. In this paper, we present an approach to global transaction management in workflow environments. The transaction mechanism is based on the well-known notion of compensation, but extended to deal with both arbitrary process structures to allow cycles in processes and safepoints to allow partial compensation of processes. We present a formal specification of the transaction model and transaction management algorithms in set and graph theory, providing clear, unambiguous transaction semantics.

Proceedings of the 2000 ACM symposium on Applied computing - Volume 2, 2000

Workflow management systems require advanced transaction support to cope with long running activities. This paper presents a model called the Virtual Transaction to provide transactional support to the workflow applications. This model simplifies the process design and enables the process designer to visualize the transactional regions and ensure correctness when running business processes that integrate related tasks that are executed at different locations. Discussions on how the ACID properties for complex business processes are achieved using this model are presented.

While the specification languages of workflow management systems focus on process execution semantics, the successful development of workflows relies on a fuller conceptualisation of business processing, including process semantics. For this, a wellspring of modelling techniques, paradigms and informal-formal method extensions which address the analysis of organisational processing structures (enterprise modelling) and communication (based on speech-act theory), is available. However, the characterisations-indeed the cognition-of workflows still appears coarse. In this paper, we provide the complementary, empirical insight of a real-scale business transaction workflow. The development of the workflow model follows a set of principles which we believe address workflow modelling suitability. Through the principles, advanced considerations including asynchronous as well as synchronous messaging, temporal constraints and a service-oriented perspective are motivated. By illustrating the suitability principles and with it the inherent complexity of business transaction domains, we offer timely insights into workflow specification extension, and workflow reuse and deployment.