Adaptive resource scheduling for workflows considering competence and preference

Abstract

A workflow consists of a collection of coordinated tasks designed to carry out a well-defined complex process such as business process in an enterprise, or information process across heterogeneous information servers. Scheduling of workflows is to find a correct execution sequence for the workflow tasks of which execution obeys the imposed constraints. If multiple resources are available to a task at a time, along with workflow scheduling, the resource scheduling is also needed to determine which resource takes care of which task. The competence and preference of resources for tasks may keep changing as time goes and sometimes such information may not be available earlier on. This paper introduces a method to model resources' competence and preference and to adaptively update them as workflows proceed. Based on the information on the their competence and preference, the proposed method assigns appropriate resources to workflow tasks. © Springer-Verlag 2004.