The e-Lollapalooza Global Workflow Modeler: A Registry-Based Workflow Modeling Methodology and System

Abstract

Recently, there are two newly emerging research issues in the workflow literature according to the proliferation of electronic commerce, electronic logistics, and electronic supply chain management markets – One is the inter-organizational workflow issue interconnecting workflow engines across interrelated organizations, and the other is the XML-based data and application integration issue interchanging workflow data and applications across the organizations. Based upon these emerging issues, we have been developing a registry-based global workflow management system, which is named ’e-Lollapalooza Global Workflow Management System,’ especially targeting on the electronic logistics/commerce markets. The e-Lollapalooza consists of four components: e-Lollapalooza Builder, e-Lollapalooza Miner, e-Lollapalooza Actor and e-Lollapalooza Enactor. This paper deals with the e-Lollapalooza Builder, a registry-based global workflow modeling system, that defines cross-organizational workflows for e-logistics and e-commerce. The e-Lollapalooza Builder can be characterized by the concept of registry that is similar to ebXML’s except registering inter-organizational workflows formatted in WPDL/XPDL. So, the registry component of the e-Lollapalooza Builder plays an important role in interconnecting workflow engines deployed in the associated organizations. We develop the builder by Java language and EJB framework approach so as to be deployed on various platforms without any further technical consideration. And its major components are the EJB-based DB component, graphical global-workflow modeler, organizational dependency analysis algorithm, organization, relevant data, invoked application, repository, and the registry component. The system is fully deployable and operable on EJB-based computing environment. In this paper, we describe detailed features of the e-Lollapalooza Builder in terms of conceptual and functional perspectives.