WIDE Workflow model and architecture

Workflow management is emerging as a challenging area for databases, stressing database technology beyond its current capabilities. Workflow management systems need to be more integrated with data management technology, in particular as it concerns the access to external databases and as a support technology for workflow management, to support intelligent exception handling and transaction management. Thus, a convergence between workflow management and databases is occurring. In order to make such convergence effective, however, it is required to improve and strengthen the specification of workflows at the conceptual level, by formalizing within a unique model their "internal behavior'' (e.g., interaction and cooperation between tasks), their relationship to the environment (e.g., assignment of work task to agents) and the access to external databases. In the WIDE (Workflow on Intelligent and Distributed database Environment) project , a rich conceptual model is proposed, including an organizational model as a basis for task assignment proposed for the project, advanced functionalities for exception handling, the concepts of multitask and supertasks for workflow modularization, and integrated extended transactional semantics. 1 WIDE is an ESPRIT Project of the European Commission (Project N. 20280). Partners in WIDE are: Sema Group sae Spain, Politecnico di Milano, University of Twente, Hospital General de Manresa, ING Bank.