Decentralized Work ow Management: Architecture and Components

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Mittasch, C.^{a; *} | König, W.^b

Affiliations: [a] Institut für Informatik, TU Bergakademie, Freiberg, D-09596 Freiberg, Germany, E-mail: chris@informatik.tu-freiberg.de | [b] Fakultät Informatik, TU Dresden, D-01062 Dresden, Germany, E-mail: koenig@ibdr.inf.tu-dresden.de

Correspondence: [*] Correspondence to: Dr. Christian Mittasch.

Abstract: This contribution describes the need for decentralized and autonomous Work ow Management Systems (WfMS) and current technologies for their realization. An own, DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) based approach is presented and crucial architecture and design decisions are outlined. A column of difficulties exist independent from the selected distributed platform, e.g. how to get initial object references, how to fill the semantic gap between service offers and service requests, how to get acceptable performance values and how to fulfill security requirements. CodAlf, our WfMS on top of DCE and DC++ exploits performance and security advantages of its open platform, and integrates an advanced type management concept to meet some of these crucial requirements.

DOI: 10.3233/ICA-1999-6203

Journal: Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 119-130, 1999