Research And Implementation Of A Graphical Modeling Tool For Workflow Based On XML Technology

Workflow is a new technology that develops rapidly recent years in computer applications fields, and as realization of workflow technology, workflow management systems have widely applied in many trades. And the most important function of workflow management systems is workflow modeling. At present, the most famous workflow standard organization in international, namely, Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), brings up workflow reference model and its system structure. In this reference model, interface 1 part, which relates to the modeling, provides the formal separation between development environment and running environment, so that the workflow process definition created by modeling tools can be explained by different runtime workflow system. The interface standard contains a public meta model used for describing process definition and an XML schema for conversion between the process definitions.The content of this paper emphasizes on the application in workflow graphical modeling , and has done some research on workflow modeling, mainly as follows :Firstly ,introduce some related notions about workflow ,then analyze the workflow management system framework and its standard which is constituted by WfMC, and emphasizing on the interface 1 part that relates to this paper in the workflow reference model.Secondly, after thoroughly analyzing the XPDL standard that relates to the interface 1 given by WfMC, based on Java development platform, realize the complete mapping definition of all entity elements in public meta model defined by above interface standard. Then combined the XML technology, realize the graphical expression of workflow definition, design and develop an efficient and universal workflow graphical modeling tool ,used to support workflow middleware and workflow business application in actual user systems.Finally, based on the developed workflow modeling tools, and combined with the typical application in practice, introduce a building process of concrete workflow model ,and give the summarizing and thinking of workflow modeling tool development.