Integration and Data Sharing between WS-Based Workflows

Although the use of workflow techniques based on Web services (WS) has grown rapidly for the past several years, there is still a significant gap to be bridged before such an approach is widely accepted as the standard way to build and represent WS-based applications. One of the reasons for this is the inability in most current workflow languages to support large and complex applications that require workflow integration and data sharing between workflows. In this paper, this issue is addressed by the introduction of the two approaches used in the Service Workflow Language (SWFL): the Procedure-Oriented approach, and the Objected-Oriented approach, for workflow integration. The data sharing and related synchronization issues that are associated with these workflow integration approaches are also discussed.