Time-compatibility of a Workflow System

摘要

A workflow system is a set of computer-supported activities organized as a single system under various flow patterns. The time management of a workflow system concerns the modelling of schedules of individual activities and the testing of compatibility among the schedules of different activities in centralized or distributed environment. In this work, based on Windows-Explorer-like workflow process model, we propose a more flexible schedule format named schedule frame, and develop a new concept of time-compatibility which compromises the two extreme aspects of prevailing ones and is defined in terms of feasible conditions. In the execution level, the algorithm for maintaining time-compatibility is presented.