Foreword
Articles and relevant resources of the basic concepts, standards, etc. of workflow are now very easy to get, using Workflow Management System (WFMS) or Business Process Management (BPM) to business in business, and no one is . But although many people say that workflow technology will become the foundation component of IT architecture [1], how do we design when we want to use workflow technology in its own business-wide applications? There are very few articles about this problem.
This article is for software developers who want to use workflow technology in enterprise applications, based on the experience and experience of author work learning, describe how to use embedded workflow engines in enterprise applications. The article first describes the scope of demand, and then introduces the analysis of the business process and the problem to be considered, and finally realize a complete example. The content of the article is very limited, but I can determine that the technician developing a line in an enterprise application, needs to help them solve the problem, there is an article with substantial content, this article should be able to provide them to some useful use information.
Demand
Enterprise Applications can also be referred to as an Information Systems or Commercial Applications. For enterprise-level applications, summary Martin Fowler is in [2] and Bevington in [3], you can get the following:
A large number of persistent data: the business activity status of the enterprise is maintained by the persistent data. The performance is large, the duration is long, there is a business association between data, and the relational database system is used as the storage management tool;
Multi-user: Enterprise's business activity status by multiple users, queries and updates through a large number of interactive interfaces. Enterprise applications should maintain the integrity and consistency of business activity status between multiple users;
Complex business logic: In order to meet business needs, business logic is complex, variable, sometimes "no logic";
Integration between enterprise applications: Enterprise's business may span multiple applications.
Applying workflow technology in an enterprise-level system mainly solves two types of issues [4 p110]: Contains integration of collaboration between all entities in a service or software process, data, resources, application logic, etc. within the system. The application of workflow technology is also divided into two types of work-alone workflow management systems and workflow components of embedded. "In the 80-90s, most of the workflow applications use the first application (independent). Now, for applications including complex processes, many software providers reposition and design their workflow products, It becomes a build module (ie, embedded) "for the application system. [4 p116]
The content provided herein is applicable to the use of embedded workflow components for "collaboration" in enterprise applications. (Continued) refer to the article: 1, Delphi Study: The Future of Process Automation: What is the role of Process Automation Technology in future Information System Architectures http://www.stevens.edu/workflow/projects/delphi/round_1/? Question8.htm
2, "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" by Martin Fowler ISBN 0-321-12742-0
3, "Business function specification of commercial applications" by Bevington IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL 39, NO 2, 20004, "Workflow-based Process Controlling" http://www.workflow-research.de/Publications/Book/index.html By Michael Zur Muehlen
5, "http://www.joinwork.net/document/the state of workflow2.htm the state of workflow" [Chinese] by Tom Baeyens
