Dynamic Workflow Process Definition Meta Model

Workflow originated in the field of government and business office automation. It is actually computer automation or semi-automation in fixed business processes in ordinary office work, and provides advanced approaches for the governments and enterprises to work better with the modern office automat. However, because the business processes of the governments and the enterprises are dynamic and easily changed in most cases, the existing definition of the static business processes has been unable to meet the practical application of the government and business needs, and conflicting between the business processes defined in the stage of setting up the workflow and the dynamic processes in the stage of implementing phase is often to appear, which causes the implementation of the workflow process not truly reflect the actual business processes. While during the time of process defining and the time of process functioning, it is necessary to make amendment dynamically, but which will often make the workflow encounter some abnormalities. Therefore, only by relying on the traditional workflow model and the static approach of defining, the dynamic nature of the workflow has been unable to meet the actual needs.In order to meet the dynamic variations of process defining in the workflow system, and based on studying the technological developments of other workflows, the thesis analyses and raises the dynamic feature of the dynamic implementation phase of the workflow process definition stage, and then provides the dynamic evolution rules of the workflow. According to the above study, the workflow process definition meta-model that was put forward by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) has been improved in the thesis as well. While the workflow process definition language (XPDL) is a kind of text description language that is based on the meta-model, thus the XPDL demands to be extended accordingly. These improvements and extension make the rectification of both the definition state and the running state process model more flexible. And a workflow management system that is based on the improved meta-model is flexible and fully shows the dynamic nature of the workflow, which lays the foundation for the workflow system better supporting the dynamic business of the enterprises, so that it is more capable of adapting to the increasingly complex dynamic changes in business processes of the governments and enterprises.