Abstract
As individuals and enterprises interconnect via wide area networks, workflows that span them seamlessly will become increasingly valuable. It is likely that heterogeneous participants - humans, applications, organizations - that are physically dispersed over such networks will share workflows that cut across organizational and geographic boundaries. We address the problem of designing a distributed workflow infrastructure that supports such scenarios in the presence of heterogeneous workflow systems and components. We present RainMaker, a workflow framework based on a service requestor/service provider execution model. RainMaker defines a core set of abstract interfaces that can be implemented by distributed workflow components. Together, the RainMaker execution model and interfaces provide a foundation for the interoperability of workflow systems and components.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bruce Silver, The BIS Guide to Workflow Software, BIS Strategy Decisions, One Longwater Circle, Norwell, MA 02061, 1995.
Workflow Management Coalition, http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/WfMC
Hamalainen, M., Whinston, A.B., and Vishik, S., Electronic Markets for Learning: Education Brokerages on the Internet, CACM, Vol. 39, Number 6, June 1996.
Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., and Vlissides, J., Design Patterns, Addison-Wesley, 1994.
Merz, M., Muller, K., and Lamersdorf, W., Service Trading and Mediation in Distributed Computing Systems, International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 1994.
Schulze, W., Bohm, M., and Meyer-Wegener, K., Services of Workflow Objects and Workflow Meta-objects in OMG compliant Environments, OOPSLA Workshop on Business Objects Design and Implementation, 1996.
Paul, S., Park, E., and Chaar, J., Essential Requirements for a Workflow Standard, OOPSLA Workshop on Business Objects Design and Implementation, October 6th, 1997, http://www.tiac.net/users/jsuth/oopsla97/santanu.html
Paul, S., Park, E., and Chaar, J., RainMan: A Workflow System for the Internet, USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies & Systems, Monterrey, California, 7–11 December, 1997. (To appear)
M. Rusinkiewicz and A. Sheth, Specification and Execution of Transactional Workflows, In W. Kim, Editor, Modern Database Systems: The Object Model, Interopreability and Beyond, ACM Press, 1994.
G. Alonso, D. Agrawal, A. El Abbadi, M. Kamath, R. Gunthor, and C. Mohan, Advanced Transactional Models in Workflow Contexts, In Proceedings of ICDE, 1996.
Frank Leymann, Supporting Business Transactions via Partial Backward Recovery in Workflow Management, in Proceedings of BTW’95, Dresden, Germany, 1995, Springer Verlag.
Asit Dan and Francis Parr, The Coyote Approach to Network Centric Service Applications, 7th International Workshop on High Performance Transaction Systems, Asilomar, California, September 14–17, 1997.
OMG Document BO RFP2, Workflow Management Facility Request for Proposal.
F. Ranno, S.K. Shrivastava and S.M. Wheater, A System for Specifing and Coordinating the Execution of Reliable Distributed Applications, International Working Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS’97), Cottbus, Germany, September 30–October 2, 1997.
Ben-Shaul, I.Z. and Kaiser, G., A Paradigm for Decentralized Process Modeling and its Realization in the OZ Environment, International Conference on Software Engineering, Sorrento, Italy, 1994.
Schuster, H., Jablonski, S., and Bussler, C., Client/Server Qualities: A Basis for Reliable Distributed Workflow Management Systems, International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Baltimore, 1997.
Papazoglou, M., Delis, A., Bouguettaya A., and Haghjoo, M., Class Library Support for Workflow Environments and Applications, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 46, No. 6, June 1997.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Paul, S., Park, E., Hutches, D., Chaar, J. (1998). RainMaker: Workflow Execution Using Distributed, Interoperable Components. In: Nikolaou, C., Stephanidis, C. (eds) Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. ECDL 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1513. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49653-X_82
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-49653-X_82
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65101-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49653-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive