The Research On Design And Application Of Workflow Service Based On WWF And Web Services

With the development of information technology, workflow software has been accepted by more and more enterprises. The reasons for enterprises to use the workflow can be summarized as follows:First, workflow can make every roles work in a collaborative way and monitor business processes; second, it can help to develop the application system with multi-tasking, multi-role and multi-collaborative. However, in the Information Technology architecture of most enterprises, especially for medium and small enterprises, their organizational structure and business processes are constantly changing. At the same time, the cost of software and hardware is too high to afford for them.In order to reduce the costs of the hardware and software and improve the flexibility of business process management, the dissertation makes use of WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation) technology framework and Web Services technology to deploy service-oriented architecture. There are two business scenarios which include collaborative office system and project process management platform in the dissertation. Based on the scenarios, we proposed multi-layers business model, designed the services based on entity model and developed the WWF-based workflow service framework. Finally, we design and implement the workflow service platform based on PaaS (Platform as a Service) pattern.About the workflow key technology, the dissertation studied the user custom activity, sequential workflow model and state machine workflow model, workflow persistence services and tracking services, and workflow communication mechanism and other key technologies. Moreover, we made some instances in the dissertation such as the implementation of sequential workflow and state machine workflow models, and how to publish workflow as web services or to call web services in the application system. All of the study of the workflow technology provides the technical basis for the realization of PaaS platform.Based on the proposed multi-layers business model, the PaaS platform provides kinds of services and application program interface, including visual process customized service in business process layer, enterprise organizational structure customized services in organizational layer, and process approval service, network documentation services and project process management services in functional layer. Meanwhile, the platform provides the visual business process monitoring to track the real-time and historical data. Based on the online analysis technology, it makes use of the historical information to generate different graphics which can help the managers to analyze the efficiency of the process. So, the business process can be managed and optimized continually.The innovation of the dissertation can be summarized as follows:First, from the viewpoint of workflow definition, it proposed a kind of process-oriented multi-layers business model, and developed the function of the visual business process modeling;Second, from the aspect of workflow execution, combined with PaaS platform and workflow key technologies, it provided a unified framework to implement process modeling service, organization modeling service and process approval service and so on.PaaS-based service pattern not only can provide online rental-type service, it can also provide third-party application development interfaces. Therefore, the achievements of the study can contents the needs of business process change, save the cost of information technology and meet the trend of enterprise information integration and business agility.This dissertation is supported by the funding from the 11th Five-Year Supporting Plan Issue (Project number:2006BAH02A06).