Abstract
Adaptability has become one of the major research topics in the area of workflow management. Today's workflow management systems have problems dealing with both ad-hoc changes and evolutionary changes. As a result, the workflow management system is not used to support dynamically changing workflow processes or the workflow process is supported in a rigid manner, i.e., changes are not allowed or handled outside of the workflow management system. In this paper, we focus on a notorious problem caused by workflow change: the “dynamic change bug” (Ellis et al.; Proceedings of the Conference on Organizational Computing Systems, Milpitas, California, ACM SIGOIS, ACM Press, New York, 1995, pp. 10–21). The dynamic change bug refers to errors introduced by migrating a case (i.e., a process instance) from the old process definition to the new one. A transfer from the old process to the new process can lead to duplication of work, skipping of tasks, deadlocks, and livelocks. This paper describes an approach for calculating a safe change region. If a case is in such a change region, the transfer is postponed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aalst W van der. Three good reasons for using a Petri-net-based workflow management system. In: Wakayama T, Kannapan S, Khoong C, Navathe S, Yates J, eds. Information and Process Integration in Enterprises: Rethinking Documents, The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science,Vol. 428, ch. 100, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, Massachusetts, 1998a: 161–182.
Aalst W van der. The application of Petri nets to workflow management. The Journal of Circuits, Systems and Computers 1998b;8(1):21–66.
Aalst W van der. workflow verification: Finding control-flow errors using Petri-net-based techniques. In: Business Process Management: Models, Techniques, and Empirical Studies, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1806. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000:161–183.
Aalst W van der, Basten T. Inheritance of workflows: An approach to tackling problems related to change. Theoretical Computer Science 2001 (to appear).
Aalst W van der, Basten T, Verbeek H, Verkoulen P, Voorhoeve M. Adaptive workflow: On the interplay between flexibility and support. In: Filipe J, ed. Enterprise Information Systems. Norwell: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000a:63–70.
Aalst W van der, Desel J, Oberweis A. (eds.) Business Process Management: Models, Techniques, and Empirical Studies, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1806. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000b.
Agostini A, Michelis G. Improving flexibility of workflow management systems. In: W van der Aalst, Pesel J, Oberweis A, eds. Business Process Management: Models, Techniques, and Empirical Studies, Lecture Notes in Computer Science,Vol. 1806. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000:218–234.
Bertino E, Martino L. Object-Oriented Database Systems: Concepts and Architecture. Addison-Wesley, Reading MA (1993).
Casati F, Ceri S, Pernici B, Pozzi G. workflow evolution. Data and Knowledge Engineering 1998;24(3):211–238.
Desel J, Esparza J. Free Choice Petri Nets, Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science, Vol. 40. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Ellis C, Keddara K. A workflow change is a workflow. In: Business Process Management: Models, Techniques, and Empirical Studies, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1806. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2000a:201–217.
Ellis C, Keddara K. ML-DEWS: Modeling language to support dynamic evolution within workflow systems. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 2000b; 9(3/4): 293–333.
Ellis C, Keddara K, Rozenberg G. Dynamic change within work-flow systems. In: Comstock N, Ellis C, Kling R, Mylopoulos J, Kaplan S, eds. Proceedings of the Conference on Organizational Computing Systems, Milpitas, California. ACM SIGOIS. New York: ACM Press, 1995:10–21.
Ellis C, Nutt G. Modelling and enactment of workflow systems. In: Marsan, M A, ed. Application and Theory of Petri Nets 1993, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 691. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1993:1–16.
Gostellow K, Cerf V, Estrin G, Volansky S. Proper termination of flow-of-control in programs involving concurrent processes. ACM Sigplan 1972;7(11):15–27.
Jablonski S. Bussler C. workflow Management: Modeling Concepts, Architecture, and Implementation. London, UK: International Thomson Computer Press, 1996.
Joeris G, Herzog O. Managing evolving workflow specifications. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IFCIS International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems, 20- 22 August New York City, New York, USA: IEEE-CS Press, 1998:310–321.
Keddara K. Dynamic evolution of workflow systems. PhD Thesis, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1999.
Kindler E, Aalst W. Liveness, fairness, and recurrence. Information Processing Letters 1999;70(6):269–274.
Koulopoulos T. The workflow Imperative. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.
Lawrence P. (ed.) workflow Handbook 1997, workflow Management Coalition. New York: Wiley, 1997.
Michelis G. De, Ellis C. Computer supported cooperative work and Petri nets. In: ReisigW, Rozenberg G, eds. Lectures on Petri Nets II: Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1492. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1998:125–153.
Murata T. Petri nets: Properties, analysis and applications. Proceedings of the IEEE 1998;77(4):541–580.
Reichert M, Dadam P. ADEPTflex: Supporting dynamic changes of workflow without loosing control. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 1998;10(2):93–129.
Reisig W, Rozenberg G. (eds.) Lectures onPetri Nets I: Basic Models, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1491. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1998.
Sadiq S, Marjanovic O, Orlowska M. Managing change and time in dynamic workflow processes. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems 2000;9(1–2):93–116.
Voorhoeve M. Aalst W van der. Conservative adaption of work-flow. In: Wolf M, Reimer U, eds. Proceedings of the International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM'96), Workshop on Adaptive workflow, Basel, Switzerland, 1996: 1–15.
Voorhoeve M, Aalst W van der. Ad-hoc workflow: Problems and solutions. In Wagner R., ed. Proceedings of the 8th DEXA InternationalWorkshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications, Toulouse, France. Los Alamitos, California: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997:36–40.
Vossen G, Weske M. The WASA2 object-oriented workflow management system. In: Delis A. Faloutsos C, Ghandeharizadeh S, ed. SIGMOD 1999, Proceedings ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, 1- 3 June, 1999, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: ACM Press, 1999:587–589.
Weske M. Foundation, design, and implementation of dynamic adaptations in a workflow management system. Fachbericht Angewandte Mathematik und Informatik 6/2000-I, Universität Münster, Münster, Germany, 2000
WFMC workflow management coalition terminology and glossary (WFMC-TC-1011). Technical report,workflow Management Coalition, Brussels, 1996.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
van der Aalst, W. Exterminating the Dynamic Change Bug: A Concrete Approach to Support Workflow Change. Information Systems Frontiers 3, 297–317 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011409408711
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011409408711