Conceptual workflow schemas

摘要

Today, the design of workflow schemas is to a large extent amanual process. Starting with business-process models, developers mustmake many decisions that are not supported by tools, to finally delivera workflow schema that can be executed by a particular workflowmanagement system (WFMS). This paper presents an approach that usesintermediate descriptions to make design decisions explicit, to organizethese decisions in a substantiated sequence, and to provide a definitionof workflow schemas that is independent of a particular WFMS. Movespecifically, a task-type structure is introduced to capture theso-called functional perspective of workflows. This structure can bemapped semi-automatically to a workflow-type configuration that isenhanced and modified so that it takes into account the specific modelelements and functionality provided by a particular WFMS. Thisconfiguration is finally used to automatically generate a workflowschema skeleton in the individual language of thus WFMS