Abstract
Workflow management systems (WfMSs) are accepted worldwide due to their ability to model and control business processes. Previously, we defined an intra-organizational workflow specification model, Process LANguage (PLAN). PLAN, with associated tools, allowed a user to describe a graph specification for processes, artifacts, and participants in an organization. PLAN has been successfully implemented in Agentflow to support workflow (Agentflow) applications. PLAN, and most current WfMSs are designed to adopt a centralized architecture so that they can be applied to a single organization. However, in such a structure, participants in Agentflow applications in different organizations cannot serve each other with workflows.
In this paper, a service-oriented cooperative workflow model, Cooperative Agentflow Process LANguage (CA-PLAN) is presented. CA-PLAN proposes a workflow component model to model inter-organizational processes. In CA-PLAN, an inter-organizational process is partitioned into several intra-organizational processes. Each workflow system inside an organization is modeled as an Integrated Workflow Component (IWC). Each IWC contains a process service interface, specifying process services provided by an organization, in conjunction with a remote process interface specifying what remote processes are used to refer to remote process services provided by other organizations, and intra-organizational processes. An IWC is a workflow node and participant. An inter-organizational process is made up of connections among these process services and remote processes with respect to different IWCs. In this paper, the related service techniques and supporting tools provided in Agentflow systems are presented.
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Shung-Bin Yan graduated form National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan in 1994. He received the Ph.D degree in Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering from NCTU in 2005. Currently, he works for Flowring Technology as the R&D director. His research interests include software engineering, software architecture, workflow system, object-oriented analysis and design.
Feng-Jian Wang graduated with M.S. and Ph.D Degrees from North-western University. Currently, he is a Professor in Computer Science Department, National Chiao-Tung University, HsinCHu, Taiwan. He is an IEEE member. He has published more than 70 technical papers in international journals and conference proceedings. His research areas include software engineering, network engineering, and programming language.
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Yan, SB., Wang, FJ. CA-PLAN, a service-oriented workflow. Int J Automat Comput 2, 195–207 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-005-0195-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-005-0195-x