SERVICE-BASED INTERACTIVE WORKFLOWS FOR MOBILE ENVIRONMENTS

Since the use of mobile devices spreads increasingly, mobile systems also play a major role for distributed business processes. In such scenarios, extending workflow management support to mobile systems offers potential to seamlessly integrate field staff into business processes, even if executing devices are disconnected from the company\u27s server. However, the heterogeneity of current mobile systems still requires complex device-specific descriptions of user interfaces to integrate manual tasks. Therefore, this paper presents an abstract and modality-independent description model to support the development and execution of interactive mobile workflows and a corresponding prototype realization based on a service-oriented execution module

Context-based Cooperation in Mobile Business Environments – Managing the Distributed Execution of Mobile Processes

Realistic requirements of mobile business applications often exceed the capabilities of their respective local environments. In order to overcome such restrictions of specific mobile devices, services, and resources, this contribution introduces the concept of context-based cooperation. It is based on mobile processes which enable applications to cross boundaries of individual systems and thereby allow combining both mobile and stationary resources in order to realize highly dynamic individual applications. This contribution presents an approach for realizing context-based cooperation built upon on a respective context management infrastructure and execution environment. It also identifies specific requirements and proposes related enhancements for mobile business applications

Towards Mobile Process as a Service

Process as a Service (PaaS) addresses modeling, execution and management of business processes without running extensive and costly process management software. Such a flexible outsourcing strategy is especially advantageous in the context of mobile devices and services which are increasingly relevant for contemporary business activities. Based on the concept of context-based cooperation, this paper proposes a PaaS solution for mobile participants which enables them to share existing local and remote resources and to utilize PaaS functionality of cooperating providers in a userdefined way. The approach is realized and evaluated by an extended prototype implementation of the DEMAC (Distributed Environment for Mobility Aware Computing) platform

Mobile Process Description and Execution

Abstract. Mobile devices are increasingly aware of their respective locations and vicinity and tend to communicate rather loosely with each other; therefore asynchronous communication paradigms are used predominately so far for corresponding mobile applications. However, while such communication mechanisms are suitable for simple activities, they may become insufficient for more complex tasks which consist of longer sequences of related activities tied together in application-oriented processes. This is of particular importance if the resulting operating sequence spans several mobile devices in frequently changing vicinities. Therefore, the work presented here provides a concept for integrating explicit support for such mobile processes into mobile system infrastructures and for distributing their execution over different nodes in the network. For this purpose, a corresponding middleware platform (extension) for context-aware mobile applications is proposed. It supports such migrating processes and helps to execute them under the restrictions typically imposed by realistic mobile applications. In particular, this paper proposes a corresponding process description language and an execution model for mobile and distributed (business) processes in the context of the project DEMAC (Distributed Environment for Mobility-Aware Computing).

Mobile Processes: Enhancing Cooperation in Distributed Mobile Environments

Currently, context awareness is one of the main trends in distributed mobile computing environments. Against this background, the demand for more complex – and additionally long-term – mobile applications increases continuously. Nevertheless, most current available mobile applications – as well as their supporting middleware platforms – are still relatively monolithic and closed systems, concentrating on only short-term activities. As a consequence, most present appliances are still restricted to rather simple tasks and are therefore rather insufficient for more complex ones which consist of sequences of related long-term activities tied together in respective application-oriented processes. In order to overcome the resource and capability restrictions of mobile environments, such application processes may profit from, e.g., cooperation between devices in the mobile vicinity – a fact which is hardly supported by existing systems. Therefore, this paper introduces a concept for integrating explicit support for mobile processes into mobile system infrastructures and for distributing their execution over different nodes in the network. Additionally, a corresponding middleware platform for context-aware and cooperative mobile applications is proposed. This framework has been designed and realized in the context of project DEMAC (Distributed Environment for Mobility-Aware Computing) which supports such migrating processes and helps to execute them under the restrictions imposed by realistic mobile applications. In particular, this paper proposes a corresponding process description language and an execution model for such mobile (business) processes