Title :
Towards evolutionary and adaptive workflow systems-infrastructure support based on Higher-Order Object Nets and CORBA
Author :
Claßen, Ingo ; Weber, Herbert ; Han, Yanbo
Author_Institution :
Fraunhofer-Inst. for Software & Syst. Eng., Berlin, Germany
Abstract :
Issues of workflow systems adaptability and evolution capability are discussed from two perspectives, namely design and evolution of workflow systems from a continuous software engineering perspective as well as redesign and runtime on-the-fly modifications of workflow models from an application perspective. Special attention is paid to a suitable infrastructure support for designing more configurable and adaptive workflow systems. A new workflow language, called Higher-Order Object Nets (HOON), is introduced. The intended uses of HOON are, on one side, to directly describe real-world business processes, and on the other side, to serve as a build-time composition model and a run-time overall control skeleton of the underlying software components that support individual business activities. On the basis of HOON and CORBA, a layered, framework-based and generic system architecture is presented
Keywords :
business data processing; object-oriented methods; object-oriented programming; systems re-engineering; CORBA; adaptive workflow systems; build-time composition model; continuous software engineering perspective; evolutionary workflow systems; framework-based system architecture; generic system architecture; infrastructure support; layered system architecture; real-world business processes; redesign; run-time overall control skeleton; runtime on-the-fly modifications; software components; workflow language; Adaptive systems; Application software; Design engineering; Electronic switching systems; Information systems; Runtime; Skeleton; Software engineering; Software systems; Systems engineering and theory;
Conference_Titel :
Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Workshop [1997]. EDOC '97. Proceedings. First International
Conference_Location :
Gold Coast, Qld.
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-8031-8
DOI :
10.1109/EDOC.1997.628371