A Lotus Notes Workflow Engine Based On XPDI

Workflow application is a necessary component of today’s information system. With thedevelopment of technique, more and more workflow applications which base on the differenttheories come up rapidly. It becomes complicated to integrate business process betweendifferent workflow applications meanwhile the original target of workflow application is tomake these processes flexible. Thus, how to make a standard to define the workflow process,how to explain this definition and how to utilize the definition becomes an important topic.This paper starts with the introduction of current workflow models, analyzing thefeatures of each model. Then it will introduce the Workflow Reference Model of WfMC andits Process Definition Language–XPDL. With IBM Lotus Notes, this paper will try to designand implement a workflow engine based on XPDL, which will provide a solution to solve theproblem on how to standardize the definition of workflow process.This paper will focus on two key problems. The first problem is how to parse, store andgenerate a XPDL file. The second problem is how to design a workflow engine with thefeatures of Lotus Notes.Regarding the first problem, this paper will provide the solution to parse the XPDLthrough DOM in Lotus Script, to store the XPDL content and XPDL format separately inLotus Notes and to generate the XDPL file through predefining the tag of XPDL metadata.The paper also provides the detail process to parse and generate the XPDL file.Regarding the second problem, this paper will mainly design the below features in aworkflow engine: how to design a job list of workflow, how to drive a workflow processinstance, how to drive a workflow activity instance, how to hibernate a workflow instance,how to traverse a hibernated workflow instance, the FSM in process status transition and howto transit the process status in Lotus Notes.Last, this paper will introduce the procument process of ALCATEL-LUCENT as an instance of a workflow application in the paper. This procument system based on thespecified workflow engine will provide ALCATEL-LUCENT the flexibility of the processrebuild and the capability of process integration. This solution will be a good sample to theother companies which are planning to make their management process flexible.