A modular approach to build workflow engines

Abstract

To provide BPM and workflow solutions with the dynamism to support frequent changes in the corporate environment, it is necessary to adopt novel strategies to efficiently develop and adapt workflow engines. One such strategy is to build new engines by reusing as much as possible from existing components. This requires two things: firstly, the mechanisms and technologies to build a library of reusable, extensible and adaptable workflow components; secondly, a platform to integrate those components into full applications. In this paper we show that Cumbia, being a platform for the development of workflow engines based on the modularization of workflows according to concerns, suits this task. This is illustrated with YOC, a Cumbia based implementation of YAWL. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.