Integrating concurrency control and distributed data into workflow frameworks: an actor model perspective

Technological advances in processor power, networking, telecommunications and multimedia are stimulating the development of applications requiring parallel and distributed computing. This new perspective is enticing research into new design methodologies that view the software as an “intelligent” collection of agents that interact by coordinating knowledge-based processes. We present an actor-based workflow architecture that would fit naturally into distributed heterogeneous environments. The actors combine object-oriented and functional programming in order to make the management of concurrency easier for the user