Conceptual workflow schemas

Today, the design of workflow schemas is to a large extent a manual process. Starting with business-process models, developers must make many decisions that are not supported by tools, to finally deliver a workflow schema that can be executed by a particular workflow management system (WFMS). This paper presents an approach that uses intermediate descriptions to make design decisions explicit, to organize these decisions in a substantiated sequence, and to provide a definition of workflow schemas that is independent of a particular WFMS. Move specifically, a task-type structure is introduced to capture the so-called functional perspective of workflows. This structure can be mapped semi-automatically to a workflow-type configuration that is enhanced and modified so that it takes into account the specific model elements and functionality provided by a particular WFMS. This configuration is finally used to automatically generate a workflow schema skeleton in the individual language of thus WFMS