Executable Work ows: A Paradigm for Collaborative Design on the Internet

This paper introduces a directed hypergraph model that supports (1) work ow composition and recon guration while accessing and executing programs, data, and computing resources across the Internet, (2) synchronous and asynchronous peer-to-peer interaction between members of any team during work ow composition and execution, (3) synchronous and asynchronous peer-to-work ow interaction between any team member and any object in the work ow. Given a library of program and data nodes, editing the work ow and its execution is as intuitive as the hierarchical schematic design capture and simulation. Examples of multisite multi-user applications demonstrate that the proposed work ow implementation provides a user-friendly paradigm for distributed and collaborative team design.