Research And Implementation Of The Distributed Workflow System Based On Form

Workflow system includes the centralized workflow system and the distributed workflow system. In contrast to the traditional centralized workflow system, the disrtibuted workflow system has not only all the functions of the centralized workflow system but also the advantages such as the high expansibility, high efficiency, high fault-tolerant and high dependability. The research of the distributed workflow system is the common research direction of the current organizations and corporations.Form is the main information exchange carrier in workflow system, form engine is used to create or edit form. The present workflow systems have poor performance in form processing and integration. The traditional HTML form which they used has difficulties in form creation, expantion, security and print, it cannot meet the processing needs of the form-based business in both government and company. So, the research of a distributed workflow system which has the good processing ability for form-based business has great value and meanings in both theory and practice.This paper analyzes the current research of the workflow system, uses the distributed workflow system as the system architecture based on the comparison of the centralized and the distributed workflow system. For the mass form-driven business processing, this paper proposes a form information model, use Word/PDF form instead of the traditional HTML form to make out a workflow form engine with high performance. It makes the form engine as the core component and the application platform to implement a suspended system. The system use COM(Component Object Model) develop the other components such as workflow engine, organization manager and permission manager, make integration with the form engine through the relative interfaces, so that the form is not only easy to create and edit but also has the WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) print feature.At last, this paper develops a complete application. It uses VBA(Visual Basic for Applications) to develop the Word form engine based on the deep study of the Microsoft Word Object Model, and develops the workflow engine and service system as dependent components. It makes communication and integration through interfaces to build a distributed workflow system which can be widely used in the automation of the form-driven business.