A Reserch On Task-Role-Based Workflow In The Grid

Now, after the development of e-business has been experienced the first phase that give priority to IT manufacturers and media, and the second phase that give priority to e-business services providers, it is entering the third phase that give priority to tradition enterprises, and this phase is the collaborative e-business phase. Collaborative e-business integrates enterprise businesses on technology level to provide a series of systems that can help enterprises payoff and operate. Its characteristics are to develop B2B(Business-to~Business) application integration and use XML to exchange information. Compare with B2C(Business-to-Customer), the relationship that B2B deal with is more complex. The complex characteristics and requirements of collaborative e-business determine that it not only need a network platform that has powerful computation ability and correspondence ability as support, but also requires this platform has such characteristics as stride organization, distributed, open and standard, etc.The grid is the next generation Internet, and it can absorb difference computation resources sufficiently, and change them into a kind of computation ability that can obtain everywhere, reliable, standard and economic. The grid also has some characteristics such as heterogeneous, scalable and dynamic, so it go without saying to become the first choose platform of collaborative e-business. In collaborative e-business, the enterprise management model has been changed fundamentally, single enterprise has been changed into supply chain enterprise, and production management has been changed into supply chain management, and the management of interior resource has been changed into the management of integrate exterior resource. It determines that the production and management of enterprise not only have interior management, but also have the ability to interaction with exterior. In the activity of collaborative e-business, workflow system exists in its every phase, and a whole businessprocess (from user negotiation, order submission, authentication, production, consignment to payment) is a big workflow, and each tache is a relatively independent sub-workflow, so the workflow in the grid is the basis of collaborative e-business. The workflow in the grid is not to transplant traditional workflow system on grid simply, that is because traditional workflow system only fit for structural and stable business process, and it would become inefficient if it is applied in some complex enterprise environment. Compare with the traditional workflow, the workflow in the grid has some virtues such as high efficiency, stride platform, stride zone, dynamic, reusable, scalable and high security, etc.After our deeply research on CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work), we think that workflow in the grid is to transfer relevant information resource and manpower resource to harmonize every tache of business process to make the process operate according to some ordinal sequences and realize the key technologies of business process automatization. In the process of grid workflow, every participant has different role, and role is stable, and every role has collaborative relationship with other roles. Task relates to different roles, and users request authorization according to their dynamic tasks. We combine role with task that can achieve balance of dynamic and stable, and can deal with workflow in the complex grid environment effectively. At the same time, we use partial inheritance of roles and classification of tasks to improve efficiency of workflow effectively because they reflect the details of the real life truely. At last, we use cloud model to solve the problem of grid workflow resource allocation and reliability evaluation because grid resources are dynamic, uncertain and heterogeneous. The task-role-based collaborative e-business system in the grid that we realize shows that our research is effective and instructive.