Micro-Workflow: A Workflow Architecture Supporting Compositional Object -Oriented Software Development

Workflow technology and process support lies at the center of modern information systems architectures. But despite the large number of commercial workflow systems, object-oriented developers implement their business, scientific, or manufacturing processes with home-made workflow solutions. Current workflow architectures are based on requirements and assumptions that don't hold in the context of object-oriented software development. This dissertation proposes micro-workflow, a new workflow architecture that bridges the gap between the type of functionality provided by current workflow systems and the type of workflow functionality required in object-oriented applications. Micro-workflow provides a better solution when the focus is on customizing the workflow features and integrating with other systems. In this thesis I discuss how micro-workflow leverages object technology to provide workflow functionality. As an example, I present the design of an object-oriented framework which provides a reusable micro-workflow architecture and enables developers to customize it through framework-specific reuse techniques. I show how through composition, developers extend micro-workflow to support history, persistence, monitoring, manual intervention, work-lists, and federated workflow. I evaluate this approach with three case studies that implement processes with different requirements.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Manolescu, Dragos-Anton

Contributors dc:contributor

• Johnson, Ralph E.

• Computer Science

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9996658

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81995