Automating Workflows for Service Provisioning: Integrating

Workflows are the structured activities that take place in information systems in typical business environments. These activities frequently involve several database systems, user interfaces, and application programs. Tkaditional database systems do not support workflows 20 any reasonable extent. Usually human beings must intervene to ensure their proper execution. W e have developed an architecture based on A I technology that automatically manages workflows. This architecture executes on top of a distributed computing environment. It has been applied t o automating service provisioning workffows; an implementation that operates on one such workflow has been developed. This work advances the C a m o t Project’s goal of developing technologies f o r integrating heterogeneous database systems. It is notable in i ts marriage of A I approaches with standard distributed database techniques.