Backward Step: the Right Direction for Production Workflow Systems

This paper describes experiences from the implementation of backward recovery for a commercial production workflow system. As a result of our research we found that compensation based backwards recovery is the most suitable approach for an external solution. Most importantly, the work has demonstrated that providing business level backward recovery is possible in the workflow domain, and that external, design-level work is relevant for product enhancement. The production workflow system used for the implementation of our work is IBM MQ Workflow. The advanced prototype is named FlowBack. We believe that the success of, and interest in, FlowBack indicates that workflow systems will need to go the way of database management systems and provide more transactionability as they mature. The FlowBack project lays the groundwork for production workflow systems and can easily be adapted to systems conforming to the Workflow Management Coalition standards.