Skip to main content

Workflow View Based E-Contracts in a Cross-Organizational E-Services Environment

  • Published:
Distributed and Parallel Databases Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In an e-service environment, workflow involves not only a single organization but also a number of business partners. Therefore, workflow inter-operability in such an environment is an important issue for enacting workflows. In this article, we introduce our approach of using workflow views as a fundamental support for E-service workflow inter-operability and for controlled visibility of (sub-)workflows by external parties. We discuss various aspects of a workflow view, and their semantics with example usage. Furthermore, we develop a contract model based on workflow views and demonstrate how management of e-contracts can be facilitated, with an Internet start-up E-service inter-organization workflow example.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. S. Abiteboul and A. Bonner, “Objects and views,” in Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD Conference, 1991.

  2. G. Alonso et al., “Exotica/FMDC: A workflow management system for mobile and disconnected clients,” Distributed & Parallel Databases, vol. 4, no.3, pp. 229–247, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  3. D. Burdett et al., Internet Open Trading Protocol, McGraw-Hill: New York, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ting Cai, P.A. Gloor, and S. Nog, “DartFlow: A workflow management system on the web using transportable agents,” Technical Report PCS-TR96-283, Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  5. F. Casati and G. Pozzi, “Modeling exceptional behaviours in commercial workflow management systems,” in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (IECIS 98), IEEE Press, 1998.

  6. F. Casati et al., “Adaptive and dynamic service composition in eFlow,” HP Laboratories Technical Report HPL-2000-39, March 2000.

  7. D.K.W. Chiu, “Exception handling in an object-oriented workflow management system,” Ph.D. Thesis, Computer Science Dept., Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Aug. 2000.

  8. D.K.W. Chiu, K. Karlapalem, and Q. Li, “E-ADOME: A framework for enacting E-services,” in VLDB Workshop on Technologies for E-Services, Cairo, Eygpt, Sept. 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  9. D.K.W. Chiu, K. Karlapalem, and Q. Li, “Views for inter-organization workflow in an E-commerce environment,” in 9th IFIP 2.6 Working Conference on Database Semantics (DS-9), Hong Kong, April 2001.

  10. D.K.W. Chiu, Q. Li, and K. Karlapalem, “A meta modeling approach for workflow management system supporting exception handling,” Information Systems, vol. 24, no.2, pp. 159–184, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  11. D.K.W. Chiu, Q. Li, and K. Karlapalem, “Facilitating exception handling with recovery techniques in ADOME workflow management system,” Journal of Applied Systems Studies, vol. 1, no.3, 2000.

  12. D.K.W. Chiu, Q. Li, and K. Karlapalem, “Web interface-driven cooperative exception handling in ADOME workflow management system,” Information Systems, vol. 26, no.2, pp. 93–120, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  13. V. Chopra et al., “Professional XML Web Services, Wrox Press, 2001.

  14. U. Dayal, “Queries and views in an object-oriented data model,” in Proceedings of 2nd International Workshop on Database Programming Languages, 1989.

  15. Enix Consulting Limited, An Independent Evaluation of i-Flow Version 3.5, 2000 (available at http://www.i-flow.com).

  16. G. Gardarin, B. Finance, and P. Fankhauser, “Federating object-oriented and relational databases: The IRO-DB experience,” in Proceedings of the 2nd IFCIS International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS' 97), 1997.

  17. GHG Corp. Clips Architecture Manual, Version 5.1. Jan. 1992 (available at http://www.ghg.net/clips/ CLIPS.html).

  18. M. Gisler, K. Stanoevska-Slabeva, and M. Greunz, “Legal aspects of electronic contracts,” in CAiSE*00 Workshop of Infrastructures for Dynamic Business-to-Business Service Outsourcing (IDSO'00), Stockholm, 5-6 June 2000.

  19. P. Grefen, K. Aberer, Y. Hoffner, and H. Ludwig, “CrossFlow: Cross-organizational workflow management in dynamic virtual enterprises,” International Journal of Computer Systems Science & Engineering, vol. 15, no.5, pp. 277–290, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  20. F. Griffel et al., “Electronic contracting with COSMOS-How to establish, negotiate and execute electronic contracts on the internet,” 2nd Int. Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop (EDOC' 98), 1998.

  21. B.N. Grosof, “A declarative approach to business rules in contracts: Courteous logic programs in XML,” in Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC99), Denver, Colorado, USA, Nov. 3-5, 1999.

  22. Hewlett Packard, Changengine Admin Edition (AdminFlow) Process Design Guide, 1998.

  23. ICQ. http://www.icq.com.

  24. Itasca Reference Manual, Ibex Corporation, 1994.

  25. K. Karlapalem, A Dani, and P. Krishna, “A frame work for modeling electronic contracts,” in Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, Yokohama, Japan, Nov. 2001, Springer, LNCS, vol. 2224, pp. 193–207.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Y. Kim, S. Kang, D. Kim, J. Bae, and K. Ju, “WW-Flow: Web-based workflow management with runtime encapsulation,” IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 4, no.3, pp. 56–64, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  27. R.M. Lee, “Documentary petri nets: A modeling representation for electronic trade procedures,” Business Process Management, pp. 359–375, 2000.

  28. Q. Li and F.H. Lochovsky, “ADOME: An advanced object modelling environment,” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 10, no.2, pp. 255–276, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  29. D.-R. Liu and M. Shen, “Modeling workflows with a process-view approach,” in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications (DASFAA 2001), April 2001, Hong Kong, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 260–267.

    Google Scholar 

  30. D. McCarthy and S. Sarin, “Workflow and transactions in InConcert,” IEEE Data Engineering, vol. 16, no.2, pp. 53–56, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  31. J.A. Miller, A.P. Sheth, K.J. Kochut, and Z.W. Luo, “Recovery issues in web-based workflow,” in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering (CAINE-99), Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 1999, pp. 101–105.

  32. K.L. Myers and P.M. Berry, “At the boundary of workflow and AI,” in Proceedings of the AAAI-99 Workshop on Agent-Based Systems in The Business Context held as part of AAAI-99, Orlando, Florida, July 1999.

  33. Object Management Group, Foreword UML specification 1.4, Sept. 2001.

  34. R.G. Smith, “The contract net protocol: High level communication and control in a distributed problem solver,” IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 29, no.12, pp. 1104–1113, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Staffware Corporation, Staffware Global-Staffware's Opportunity to Dominate Intranet based Workflow Automation, 2000, http://www.staffware.com.

  36. A. ter Hofstede, M. Orlowska, and J. Rajapakse, “Verification problems in conceptualworkflowspecifications,” Data & Knowledge Engineering, vol. 24, no.3, pp. 239–256, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  37. TIBCO Software Inc., which has acquired In Concert Inc., http://www.tibco.com.

  38. Workflow Management Coalition, The Workflow Reference Model. (WFMC-TC-1003, 19-Jan-95, 1.1)

  39. Workflow Management Coalition, Terminology and Glossay, WFMC-TC-1011, Feb. 1999, 3.0.

  40. Workflow Management Coalition, David Hollingsworth, ICL A&TC. White Paper-Events. April 1999.

  41. Workflow Management Coalition, Workflow Standard-Interoperability Wf-XML Binding, WFMC-TC-1023, May 2000.

  42. W.M.P. van der Aalst, and A. Kumar, “XML based schema definition for support of inter-organizational workflow,” in Proc. 21st International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets (ICATPN 2000), Aarhus, Denmark (2000).

  43. W.M.P. van der Aalst, and M. Weske, “The P2P approach to interorganizational workflows,” in Proceedings of 13th International Conference Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2001), Interlaken, Switzerland, June 2001, Springer, LNCS, vol. 2068, pp. 140–156.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Chiu, D.K., Karlapalem, K., Li, Q. et al. Workflow View Based E-Contracts in a Cross-Organizational E-Services Environment. Distributed and Parallel Databases 12, 193–216 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016503218569

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016503218569