Multimedia and QoS extensions of distributed workflows

Distributed workflow applications are of growing importance in many application fields such as office automation, manufacturing and telematics. This paper outlines support facilities for such applications based on distributed platforms. It then discusses further requirements resulting from multimedia extensions and from the use of advanced network technologies. In particular, the use of high-performance networks with specific quality of service (QoS) aspects and the employment of mobile communication facilities are addressed. Architectural support for such environments is presented, and experiences with specific software support solutions are discussed. As an application example, workflow processing for environmental analysis is used in order to illustrate the approaches based on practical scenarios. The paper concludes with an outlook to future work