Dynamic Workflow Restructuring Framework for Long-Running Business Processes

Abstract

This chapter presents a framework for dynamic restructuring of long-running business processes. The framework is composed of the ActivityFlow specification language, a set of workflow restructuring operators, and a dynamic workflow management engine. The ActivityFlow specification language enables the flexible specification, composition, and coordination of workflow activities. There are three unique features of our framework design. First, it supports a collection of specification mechanisms, allowing workflow designers to use a uniform workflow specification interface to describe different types of workflows involved in their organizational processes. A main objective of this characteristic is to help increase the flexibility of workflow processes in accommodating changes. The ActivityFlow language also provides a set of activity modeling facilities, enabling workflow designers to describe the flow of work declaratively and incrementally, and allowing to reason about correctness and security of