Advanced Architectures for Transactional Workflows or Advanced Transactions in Workflow Architectures

In this short paper, we outline the workflow management systems research in the Information Systems division at the University of Twente. We discuss the two main themes in this research: architecture design and advanced transaction management. Attention is paid to the coverage of these themes in the context of the completed Mercurius and WIDE projects and in the new CrossFlow project. In the latter project, contracts are introduced as a new theme to support electronic commerce aspects in workflow management

Protocols for Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases

A federated database is comprised of multiple interconnected database systems that primarily operate independently but cooperate to a certain extent. Global integrity constraints can be very useful in federated databases, but the lack of global queries, global transaction mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. This paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity constraint checking in federated databases: (1) The problem of constraint checking in a federated database environment is clearly formulated. (2) A family of protocols for constraint checking is presented. (3) The differences across protocols in the family are analyzed with respect to system requirements, properties guaranteed by the protocols, and processing and communication costs. Thus, our work yields a suite of options from which a protocol can be chosen to suit the system capabilities and integrity requirements of a particular federated database environment

Integrity Constraint Checking in Federated Databases

A federated database is comprised of multiple interconnected databases that cooperate in an autonomous fashion. Global integrity constraints are very useful in federated databases, but the lack of global queries, global transaction mechanisms, and global concurrency control renders traditional constraint management techniques inapplicable. The paper presents a threefold contribution to integrity constraint checking in federated databases: (1) the problem of constraint checking in a federated database environment is clearly formulated; (2) a family of cooperative protocols for constraint checking is presented; (3) the differences across protocols in the family are analyzed with respect to system requirements, properties guaranteed, and costs involved. Thus, we provide a suite of options with protocols for various environments with specific system capabilities and integrity requirement

Two Case Studies of Subsystem Design for General-Purpose CSCW Software Architectures

This paper discusses subsystem design guidelines for the software architecture of general-purpose computer supported cooperative work systems, i.e., systems that are designed to be applicable in various application areas requiring explicit collaboration support. In our opinion, guidelines for subsystem level design are rarely given most guidelines currently given apply to the programming language level. We extract guidelines from a case study of the redesign and extension of an advanced commercial workflow management system and place them into the context of existing software engineering research. The guidelines are then validated against the design decisions made in the construction of a widely used web-based groupware system. Our approach is based on the well-known distinction between essential (logical) and physical architectures. We show how essential architecture design can be based on a direct mapping of abstract functional concepts as found in general-purpose systems to modules in the essential architecture. The essential architecture is next mapped to a physical architecture by applying software clustering and replication to achieve the required distribution and performance characteristics

Supporting telecom business processes by means of workflow management and federated databases

This report addresses the issues related to the use of workflow management\ud systems and federated databases to support business processes that operate on\ud large and heterogeneous collections of autonomous information systems. We\ud discuss how they can enhance the overall IT-architecture. Starting from the\ud OSCA architecture, we develop an architecture that includes workflow\ud management systems and federated databases. In this architecture, the notion of\ud information systems as a monolithic entity disappears. Instead, business\ud processes are supported directly by workflows that combine presentation\ud blocks, function blocks, and data blocks. We address the specific issues of\ud transaction management and change management in such an architecture

Contract-Based Transaction Management in Cross-Organizational Workflow Management

Cross-organizational workflow management is an essential ingredient for process integration in virtual enterprises. To obtain cross-organizational workflow processes with robust semantics, these processes should be supported by highlevel cross-organizational transaction management. In this context, transaction management should support both intra- and inter-organizational transaction semantics. An important aspect of the latter is support for rollback over organization boundaries. In static virtual enterprises, complete transaction structures can be statically defined in cross-organizational workflow processes. In dynamic virtual enterprises, though, transaction structures must be constructed on-the-fly, based on process control requirements of the partners that decide to form the virtual enterprise. This presentation shows how the problem of cross-organizational transaction management is approached in the CrossFlow project, in which virtual enterprises are dynamically formed on the basis of contracts. These contracts specify the workflow processes on an abstract level, including their process control and transactional aspects. The transaction model used is an extension of the sagabased model developed in the WIDE project. The transactional constructs in the contract are interpreted by a two-layer transaction management subsystem distributed over the partners in the virtual enterprise. A prototype of this subsystem will be part of the CrossFlow demonstrator system

Combining Theory and Practice in Integrity Control: A Declarative Approach to the Specification of a Transaction Modification Subsystem

Integrity control is generally considered an important topic in the field of database system research. In the database literature, many proposals for integrity control mechanisms canbe found. A large group of proposals has a formal character, and does not cover complete algorithms that can be used in a real-world database system with multi-update transactions. Another group of proposals is system-oriented and often lacks a complete formalbackground on transactions and integrity control; algorithms are usually described in system terms. This paper combines the essentials of both groups: it presents a declarative specification of a transaction-based integrity control technique that has a solidformal basis and can easily be applied in real-world database systems. The technique, called transaction modification, features simple semantics, full transaction support, and extensibility to parallel data processing. These claims are supported by a prototype implementation of a transaction modification subsystem in the high-performance PRISMA/DB database system. This paper shows that it is well possible for an integrity control technique tocombine a formal approach with complete functionality and high performance

CrossFlow: Cross-Organizational Workflow Management for Service Outsourcing in Dynamic Virtual Enterprises

In this report, we present the approach to cross-organizational workflow management of the CrossFlow project. CrossFlow is a European research project aiming at the support of cross-organizational workflows in dynamic virtual enterprises. The cooperation in these virtual enterprises is based on dynamic service outsourcing specified in electronic contracts. Service enactment is performed by dynamically linking the workflow management infrastructures of the involved organizations. Extended service enactment support is provided in the form of cross-organizational transaction management and process control, advanced quality of service monitoring, and support for high-level flexibility in service enactment. CrossFlow technology is realized on top of a commercial workflow management platform and applied in two real-world scenarios in the contexts of a logistics and an insurance company

Relational Algebra for In-Database Process Mining

The execution logs that are used for process mining in practice are often obtained by querying an operational database and storing the result in a flat file. Consequently, the data processing power of the database system cannot be used anymore for this information, leading to constrained flexibility in the definition of mining patterns and limited execution performance in mining large logs. Enabling process mining directly on a database - instead of via intermediate storage in a flat file - therefore provides additional flexibility and efficiency. To help facilitate this ideal of in-database process mining, this paper formally defines a database operator that extracts the 'directly follows' relation from an operational database. This operator can both be used to do in-database process mining and to flexibly evaluate process mining related queries, such as: "which employee most frequently changes the 'amount' attribute of a case from one task to the next". We define the operator using the well-known relational algebra that forms the formal underpinning of relational databases. We formally prove equivalence properties of the operator that are useful for query optimization and present time-complexity properties of the operator. By doing so this paper formally defines the necessary relational algebraic elements of a 'directly follows' operator, which are required for implementation of such an operator in a DBMS