Introducing EAI and service components into process management

Workflow has grown to be a primary method in managing processes. Improving the ability to support heterogeneous applications for workflow management system (WFMS) will promote the more popular application of workflow technology in wide areas. Moreover, as e-service is becoming as a focus in business process management, workflow technology is facing the challenge to support e-services in a proper way. We import the enterprise application integration (EAI) technology into workflow enactment service to support heterogeneous applications in a uniform way; and also we introduce some service-related components into workflow reference model to support e-services in processes. A WFMS prototype based on our extended workflow model is also presented. Semantic knowledge is used in this prototype to make service registration and discovery.