– 1 – Mentor - lite : Integrating Light - Weight Workflow Management Systems within Business Environments ( Extended Abstract )

Workflow management systems support an efficient, largely automated execution of business processes. If a workflow management system is used to implement a computer supported business process from scratch, all the functionality of the workflow management system can be fully exploited. In particular, the control flow will be completely specified in the workflow management system’s specification language, and will be completely controlled by the workflow engine at execution time. In this case, external applications only implement activities of a workflow and can be integrated by means of a simple invocation interface. This is what almost all workflow management systems aim at. Consequently, the workflow management coalition (WfMC) proposes an architecture specifically tailored to this scenario [WFMC].