Research And Application Of Collaborative Workflow Management System Based On Multi-Tier Architecture

With the development of network technologies, many application fields on information management based upon networks have emerged and tended to be mature. E-commerce, E-affairs for government, office automatism (OA) and enterprises information system have become the focal points of the applications on Management Information Systems (MIS). In these fields, Business Process Management (BPM) is a common concerned problem. Different application fields contain different business requirements, and with the evolution of the application environments, corresponding business processes may be changed. Therefore, introducing the concept of workflow into MIS and making the MIS processes the capabilities of auto-adaptability and reconfiguration are rather important. Based on the analysis of the key factors affects the business process management and the development of information system, the basic concept of workflow is discussed ,the general idea of a workflow application platform is raised , that can integrate the information flow and work flow effectively. Then the framework and methods are discussed for the development of it. At last, the platform decides to put forward its architect which has 3 or more tier's based on object-oriented and component programming technology. To pursue such performance as this system's easy-using, maintainability, scalability and platform independency,based on the 3-tier structure and distributed components technology---EJB, the platform implements the middle tier to manage the database. At the same time, the client program is developed by the Web technology and then access the middle tier on the Http technology. Also, the system construct its workflow engine based on the shark---a java open source project and use the Jawe---a graphic workflow definition tool---to define the working process. This paper starts with the study of the kernal technologies of the multi-tier architecture and the workflow technology, combining a successful case which uses the multi-tier architecture's workflow management system to handle the process reengineering of the enterprise, author puts forward a workflow prototype based on multi-tier architecture, and proves that the workflow management system based on multi-tier architecture is much more superior and expansible than that based on C/S architecture, and multi-tier architecture is the future of the WFMS's architecture.