Open Source Workflow Systems

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to broaden the reader’s knowledge in the area of open sourceWfMS. To achieve this we introduce three other open sourceWfMSs. These are OpenWFE, jBPM and Enhydra Shark, which according to download statistics (July 2008) are the open source systems with the largest number of downloads (closely followed by YAWL). The purpose of the presentation is not to provide detailed insight into each of these systems, but rather to expose the reader to different approaches and to discuss the similarities and differences of these approaches with regard to YAWL. The chapter is divided into three parts, each describing one system. The descriptions follow the same format as much as possible. First, some background information is given. Subsequently, the architecture is described. Then an introduction to the underlying process modeling language is given from control-flow, data, and resource perspectives. After that, a part of the Order Fulfillment case is modeled and the solution briefly discussed. Each description concludes with a brief comparison of the system and YAWL. All files containing the discussed examples are distributed for test-runs with the electronic supplement of the book.