Abstract
Workflow management systems usually interpret a workflow definition rigidly, allowing no deviations during execution. However, there are real life situations where users should be allowed to deviate from the prescribed static workflow definition for various reasons, including lack of information about parameter values and unavailability of the required resources. To flexibilize workflow execution, this paper proposes an exception handling mechanism that allows the execution to proceed when otherwise it would have been stopped. The proposal is introduced as a set of extensions to OWL-S that capture the information required for the flexibilization mechanism. In particular, this paper focus on the transactional behavior of a workflow instance, in the sense that it guarantees that either all actions executed by the instance terminate correctly or they are all abandoned.
An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11914853_71.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bider, I., Khomyakov, M.: Is it Possible to Make Workflow Management Systems Flexible? Dynamical Systems Approach to Business Processes. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Groupware (CRIWG 2000), Madiera, Portugal, October 2000, pp. 138–141 (2000)
Canals, G., Godart, C., Charoy, F., Molli, P., Skaf, H.: COO Approach to Support Cooperation in Software Developments. In: IEEE Proceedings in Software Engineering, April/June 1998, vol. 145, pp. 79–84 (1998)
Casati, F., Ceri, S., Pernici, B., Pozzi, G.: Workflow Evolution. In: Thalheim, B. (ed.) International Conference on Conceptual Modeling / the Entity Relationship Approach (15th ER 1996), October 1996. LNCS, pp. 438–455. Springer, Heidelberg (1996)
Chu, W.W., Chen, Q., Merzbacher, M.: CoBase: a Cooperative Database SystemStudies. In: Demolombe, R., Imielinski, T. (eds.) in Logic and Computation 3: Nonstandard Queries and Nonstandard Answers, vol. 3, pp. 41–72. Oxford University Press, New York (1994)
Chu, W.W., Mao, W.: CoSent: A Cooperative Sentinel for Intelligent Information Systems (March 2000), Computer Science Department - University of California, LA (2000)
Freund, T., Storey, T.: Transactions in the World of Web Services, Part 1: an Overview of WS-Transaction and WS-Coordination. IBM, DeveloperWorks (August 2002), http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-wstx1/
Freund, T., Storey, T.: Transactions in the World of Web Services, Part 2: An Overview of WS-Transaction and WS-Coordination. IBM, DeveloperWorks ( August 2002), http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-wstx2/
Grigori, D., Charoy, F., Gobart, C.: Flexible Data Management and Execution to Support Cooperative Workflow: The COO Approach. In: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Cooperative Database Systems for Advanced Applications (CODAS 2001), April 2001, pp. 124–131 (2001)
Halliday, J.J., Shrivastava, S.K., Wheater, S.M.: Flexible Workflow Management in the OPENflow System. In: Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC 2001), pp. 82–92. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2001)
Joeris, G.: Defining Flexible Workflow Execution Behaviors. In: Enterprise-wide and Cross-enterprise Workflow Management - Concepts, Systems, Applications, GI Workshop Proceedings - Informatik 1999, pp. 49–55 (1999); Ulmer Informatik Berichte Nr. 99-07
Mangan, P., Sadiq, S.: On Building Workflow Models for Flexible Processes. In: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series - Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australasian Conference on Database Technologies (ADC 2002), Melbourne, Australia, January/February 2002, vol. 5, pp. 103–109. Australian Computer Society, Inc., Darlinghurst (2002)
Martin, D., Burstein, M., Hobbs, J., Lassila, O., McDermott, D., McIlraith, S., Narayanan, S., Paolucci, M., Parsia, B., Payne, T., Sirin, E., Srinivasan, N., Sycara, K.: OWL-S: Semantic Markup for Web Services. W3C Member Submission (November 2004), http://www.w3.org/Submission/2004/SUBM-OWL-S20041122/Overview.html
Nutt, G.J.: The Evolution Toward Flexible Workflow Systems. Distributed Systems Engineering 3, 276–294 (1996)
Tatiana, A.S.C.: Vieira. Execução Flexível de Workflows. PhD thesis, Department of Informatics - Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, RJ - Brazil (August 2005) (in Portuguese)
Weske, M.: Flexible Modeling and Execution of Workflow Activities. In: Proceedings of the Thirty-First Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, January 1998, vol. 7, pp. 713–722 (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Vieira, T.A.S.C., Casanova, M.A. (2006). Transactional Behavior of a Workflow Instance. In: Meersman, R., Tari, Z. (eds) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2006: CoopIS, DOA, GADA, and ODBASE. OTM 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4275. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11914853_46
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11914853_46
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-48287-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48289-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)