Introduction
With the process of social production, workflow plays an increasingly important role. According to the definition of WFMC, workflow (Workflow) is the automatic operation of part or the whole business process, performance for the participants of the documents, information or tasks in accordance with the rules to take action and make it passed between the participants. In short, the workflow is a series of interrelated, automated business activities or tasks. This article details UML-based workflow management system analysis and modeling.
An overview of the workflow
The workflow of the twentieth century originated in the seventies, subject to the limitations of the network, the first workflow system mainly based enterprise document processing. The twentieth century, the nineties, with the development and application of Internet technology to promote the great development of e-commerce applications, enabling companies and between companies, departments within the company and each subsidiary of the business deal between the possible This is the development of the workflow is a big opportunity and challenge.
According to the forecast of international organizations concerned with the development of electronic commerce, data processing for the center's database products have entered the stable development period, to handle business process-centric workflow products will enter a rapid development period. In China, as the standardization of enterprise management and expanding the scale of the enterprise's computer management will not only remain in the information resources management, and will be more complex business process management forward.
In order to achieve organizational goals, the business activities in chronological or logical relationship with each other to connect the business processes. In the business development process, documentation, information or tasks, based on organizational norms passed between the participants, processing or execution. Overall business processes, implemented based on computer-aided automatic processing to achieve all or part of the called workflow. In other words, workflow is a computer-assisted automated implementation of all or part of the work process, which can run on heterogeneous, distributed operating environment for people to work together. Workflow for business process server is a visual design, management and control of business processes running, and in the actual implementation process can dynamically modify the business processes of a computer software platform. It enables rapid development, deployment and operation of enterprise business management system, e-commerce systems possible. It also allows companies in the midst of the market environment, in order to quickly adapt to market changes, preserve existing investments in the existing system unchanged, changed their business or business processes possible. If it can be used in: the procurement processing, all kinds of applications, orders and quotation processing, employee performance appraisal, personnel changes, loan processing, claims processing, B2B, e-commerce.
2 Overview of Workflow Management System
Workflow management system is to define, create and implement workflow systems, it is a special kind of computer supported collaborative processing (CSCW, Computer Supported CooperativeWork) software system.
Generation workflow management system
Workflow Management System (WfMS, WorkflowManagementSystem) is a computer support distributed, collaborative business processes work into a study of automatic or semi-automatic target software system. With the computer network, especially Internet / Intranet development and application of the rapid, computer support distributed, collaborative workflow system to work in enterprises and institutions become increasingly important position, but also has broad prospects.
Workflow management system is to define, create, implement workflow systems. Development of such software is to the distributed, collaborative processing activities of each node, according to a predefined control processes implemented to achieve the automatic execution and their effective management. Development of such software is very repetitive, workflow management system is the type of software flow control part of the public (run services workflow engine), management and other public parts of some abstract form a software development platform users only need to come out of their control flow description, the platform software can control the flow of their automatic implementation and effective management, without the need for repeated each time a different application development.
Different workflow management system can have different implementations, different underlying communication mechanism, the application range also may differ greatly, but all of the workflow management system application layer from the user perspective, the common workflow management system should be to provide support for the following three features:
The first is the construction of functions, namely, business process workflow and composition of the activities of these business process definition and modeling.
Followed by the operation control function, that is, to some of the operating environment for creation, execution and control workflow instance, activate the appropriate 资源 and applications, and complete Guocheng in an activity to activity from the Kongzhi transfer. It is the workflow management system core.
Finally, run the interactive features, that is running the workflow instance, workflow management system with workflow participants (operations or control participants) and external applications to interact function.
As the Information Technology De Fa Zhan and increasingly intense business competition, people are no longer satisfied the independent, fragmented office automation and computer applications, but the need for a comprehensive, integrated solution. As a kind of routine affairs management, integration of technology, WfMS appearance is inevitable. It can improve and optimize business processes, improve operational efficiency; to achieve better control of business processes, improve customer service quality; to improve the flexibility and other business processes.
3, the composition of workflow management system
A complete workflow management system includes the following seven sections of the components and data.
a. Process Definition Tool
Process definition tools are used to create the computer can handle the business process description. It can be formalized process definition language, or object-relational model, it can be simply provided the information transfer between users a set of routing commands.
b. Process Definition
Process definition (data) contains all the business processes to be the workflow subsystem implementation of the necessary information. This information includes the starting and ending conditions, each composed of activities, events scheduling rules, the business participants need to be done, related applications and data call information.
c. workflow execution and workflow engine subsystem
Workflow execution subsystem, also known as (business) process execution environment, including one or more of the workflow engine. Workflow engine is the core software group element WfMS. It's features include: the definition of the interpretation process, create process instances and control its implementation, scheduling of activities, worksheets for the user to add a work item, an application program interface (API, Application Program Interface) call the application process, provide oversight and management functions and so on. Workflow execution subsystem can include multiple workflow engine, workflow engine through the collaboration of different joint implementation of the workflow.
d. workflow control data
Means the implementation of workflow and workflow engine management subsystem system data, for example, the workflow instance state information, state information for each activity.
e. workflow relevant data
Means the business process related data. WfMS use these data to determine the workflow instance state transition, such as decision-making process of scheduling data transmission of data between activities. Workflow relevant data can be both a workflow engine, can also be invoked by the application.
f. work table and work table handler
Work table lists the participants and business process related to a series of work items, work table while processing work on the user and the interaction between the management table. Processing completed worksheet functions: to support the user select a work sheet items, re-allocation of work items, reporting the completion of work items, work item is processed in the process of calling the corresponding application procedures.
g. application and application data
Applications can be WfMS calls or through an application proxy is an indirect call. Through the application process call, WfMS automatically complete partial or complete an activity, or to support the work of business participants. And workflow control data and related data are different in terms of application data the application is local data, and other parts of the WfMS is not visible.
Terminology