Cross-organisational workflow enactment via progressive linking by run-time agents

Abstract

Driven by popular adoptions of workflow and requirements from the practice of virtual enterprise (VE), research in workflow interoperability is currently on the increase. Nonetheless, it is still in its early stage compared with the maturity of individual workflow technology. Some attempts have been tried, however results are not satisfactory especially in a VE context, where many of the partnerships are dynamic and temporary. Reasons include the rigidity and high initial coordination cost inherently associated with top-down modelling and enactment approaches. Therefore, this paper proposes a bottom-up and WfMS 1 -independent approach towards cross-organisational workflow enactment, which is via progressive linking enabled by run-time agents. This is expected to pave the way for further cross-organisational workflow needs. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.