Workflow technology and process support lies at the center of modern information systems architectures. But despite the large number of commercial workflow systems, object-oriented developers implement their business, scientific, or manufacturing processes with home-made workflow solutions. Current workflow architectures are based on requirements and assumptions that don't hold in the context of object-oriented software development. This dissertation proposes micro-workflow, a new workflow architecture that bridges the gap between the type of functionality provided by current workflow systems and the type of workflow functionality required in object-oriented applications. Micro-workflow provides a better solution when the focus is on customizing the workflow features and integrating with other systems. In this thesis I discuss how micro-workflow leverages object technology to provide workflow functionality. As an example, I present the design of an object-oriented framework which provides a reusable micro-workflow architecture and enables developers to customize it through framework-specific reuse techniques. I show how through composition, developers extend micro-workflow to support history, persistence, monitoring, manual intervention, work-lists, and federated workflow. I evaluate this approach with three case studies that implement processes with different requirements.
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