Research On Web Service-based Workflow Technology In Support Of Virtual Enterprise

Intense market competition urges enterprises not only to reduce expenditures, but also to provide optimal solutions on satisfying customers' needs. Which requires enterprises to outsource partial or all tasks to external enterprise. So the Virtual Enterprise comes into being. Workflow technology has been successfully applied in coordinating and streamlining business process but is so far limited to a single enterprise. With the tremendous development of global networks and the emergence of Web Services, it is possible to efficiently exchange data and communicate between service providers and service requesters. The extension of workflow management systems to manage Virtual Enterprise business processes therefore seems to be a promising solution. This thesis promotes a Web Service-based distributed workflow system architecture, which can efficaciously support the operation of Virtual Enterprise. In this paper, firstly introduces Virtual Enterprise's traits and the research status quo about Workflow of Virtual Enterprise in domestic and foreign countries, then analyses the significance of this research. Secondly based on the research about Web Services technology, ontology and the requirement analysis on Virtual Enterprise workflow system, a distributed workflow system based Web Services is presented, then the design principle of this system and architecture is expounded. Thirdly workflow process model is proposed and based on the model a visual workflow model tool is designed. The workflow process models can support transaction processing. Ultimately theses models are saved as XML files convenient for sharing information. Fourthly, this paper analyses the running mechanism of this system. We brings forward the scheduling algorithm of workflow engine, designs the external Web Service interface, also including the design of SOAP-based message communication layer and Web-based worktable manager. Meanwhile we improve the closure granularity and processing method of Altruistic Locking Protocol in long transaction processing. In order to solve the partners' searching problem in Virtual Enterprise, a strategy of ranking matching to semantic web service discovery is proposed. Finally this paper introduces an example to validate the feasibility of designed framework.