Research On Flexibility And Adaptation To Make Workflow System Support Dynamic Change

Workflow management technology is one of the latest technologies of computing in recent years. And it has already become a research focus of present IT field. At the same time, as the key technology of process management and process control in modern enterprise, workflow technology provides the whole framework including model analysis, model construction, model management and model running. However, with the development of actual application of workflow technology, the people find out that the workflow products cannot support the dynamic change of business demands, namely the workflow system lacks of agility and adaptation. So how to realize the dynamic adaptation and flexibility has become the hot spot in workflow study. Furthermore it is a difficult point of this field at the same time. Under this background, this thesis studies some key technologies of how to realize the dynamic workflow system. The working mode of workflow can be divided into model construction stage and system running stage. As to the model construction stage, the workflow model is the abstract form of business process. And the workflow modeling is the basis of theoretical research and practical application. This thesis first designs a workflow model supporting dynamic change from the dynamic point. Based on the dynamic model, it analyzes the dynamic modeling technologies such as dynamic process modeling, dynamic organization modeling and dynamic resource modeling respectively. Then it provides the methods of flexible workflow modeling from the point of flexibility and sets forth several flexible modeling technologies such as object oriented based technology, hypermedia based technology and black box based technology respectively. As to the running stage, this thesis discusses how to realize the dynamic workflow system with the characteristics of flexibility and adaptation step by step. After analyzing the characteristics of dynamic, it gives out the dynamic controlling methods based on the status messages. Then it discusses how to modify the process definition whin running stage in detail and provides the relevant algorithm. Secondly, it discusses how to make the workflow system more flexible with the characteristic of dynamic. And it studies how to realize the flexible workflow system based on black box and Agent. At the same time, it suggests the generic standards of how to evaluate the workflow system whether it has flexibility. Furthermore it compares several kinds of flexible modeling technology discussed in the thesis. Thirdly, it studies how to realize the adaptive workflow based on analyzing the characteristics of dynamic and flexibility. Then it analyzes the adaptation of organization model, resource model and process definition respectively. Finally it provides the realizing methods of rule database based, methods of exceptions detection and disposing based respectively. The most commonly used model for office decision-making supporting system is the workflow management system. The thesis discusses the designing methods of dynamic workflow in document transferring in stress by studying the office automation system based on workflow technology. It gives out the document transferring model and transferring mechanic. And it gives out a series of strategies of data integrity, data browse and system security. All of these will be useful for real application.