Workcase-oriented workflow enactment components for very large scale workflows

Abstract

The scalability problem in the current workflow management systems is the most impeccable issue, as the sizes of the systems and their applications are becoming much larger and more complex. Also, we can predict that very large-scale workflow systems will become more prevalent in the near future. Unfortunately, however, it is hard to say that the OMG's workflow enatment components' gives a satisfactory performance in coping with the issue. We so try to propose a new type of workflow enactment component-the workcase-oriented workflow enactment component-that is able to provide better performance in handling the scalability issue. In this paper2, we describe the details of the workcaseoriented workflow enactment component and its related components-PDLAgent Component, OMAgent, WorklistHandler, Requester, Workflow Queue, Logger, Scriptinterpreter, and ToolAgent Component-that are additionally needed for performing the workflow enactment functionality implemented in an EJB-based workflow management system. Finally, we propose a possible overall system architecture to be implemented by applying the workcase-oriented workflow enactment components proposed in this paper. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.