A Framework for Workflow Management Systems Based on Objects, Rules and Roles

Abstract

Introduction Workflow management systems (WFMS) have been introduced to support the design, execution and monitoring of generally long-lasting business processes. A business process or workflow typically consists of various activities which have to be executed in some order involving multiple collaborating persons in a distributed environment to fulfill a certain task in an organization [Jablonski and Bussler 1996]. One of the most challenging issues of WFMS is to provide concepts for flexibly and dynamically reacting to frequently changing requirements in an organization [Ellis et al. 1995]. This has been the driving force behind the development of our framework for WFMS called TriGS flow , which integrates three basic technologies [Kappel et al. 1995]. First, objectoriented database technology is used to build a generic workflow model providing both database functionality and possibilities for model