Research On Enterprise Workflow Information Active Sharing Technology

Information Integration and Process Integration are two key issues that bring modern enterprises into information age. Their successful implementation supplies enterprise with powerful development ability. However, along with the technology developing and increasing practical needs, the static sharing mode and separation of information from business processes severely hindered the improving of enterprise's operation efficiency. This dissertation* proposes the research theme on Enterprise Workflow Information Active Sharing technology to tackle these problems. The following achievements have been attained in this dissertation:(1) Idea proposed on Enterprise Workflow Information Active SharingThe main idea of Enterprise Workflow Information Active Sharing is to take a strategy with "active delivery as the main method and efficient user query as the assistant". This idea is twofold: 1) the task related information that can be specified beforehand will be proactively delivered to users and be updated in the running process; 2) the task related information that can't be proactively delivered can be aquired by user's explicit query through a special designed query interface.(2) System Framework of Enterprise Workflow Information Active Sharing This dissertation proposes a rational system framework of Enterprise Workflow ActiveSharing. This framework employs information index to support automated information search process. The information search unit is responsible for processing information needs and promoting information search process. Workflow is used as the information carrier and delivers task related information along with process flow. Users can send information search requests to information search unit with the help of information search client to get the needed information in an efficient and precise way.(3) Some Key Technologies for Enterprise Workflow Information Active SharingBased on the proposed system framework, the detailed study on the key technologies of Enterprise Workflow Information Active Sharing have been made:A directed graph based new workflow modeling method is proposed. The new workflow modeling method treat information flow with the same importance as process flow and can give fundamental support to the operation of information needs description. The markup language format of the graphical workflow model is also studied.A function and predicate based information content description method is studied. This method combines the rich output of function and the powerful semantic express ability ofpredicate and can be used to build precise and detailed'Information needs descriptions for workflow activities. This method can also be used as the request expression language for user query.A multi-agent based lightweight process control engine of Enterprise Workflow Information Active Sharing is studied. Besides workflow management, this control engine can process information needs in workflow model and promote information active sharing process. The special member units, working principle and process/activity assign algorithm of this engine is also studied.The formalization of workflow context is studied. The dissertation point out that workflow context is an integration of process context, sub-process context, activity context, role context, personal context and local working environment context. Workflow context has an object structure of net shape in part and chain shape on the whole. The context space is set up to provide managing and accessing services to outside entities.The enterprise information index is studied. The semantic-based enterprise information index is built on the basis of extended BOM. Enterprise information space holds information index and provide index search services. Multi-agent is employed in enterprise information space to perform information index search and information entity access task with the help of mapping mechanism between atomic index and information entity. The search algorithm of inf...