Research On Workflow Change Management Based On Meta-model

In the current enterprise workflow applications, workflow management technology hasgot in-depth development; more and more enterprises take workflow technology as a carrierto promote business process automation, which is particularly evident in the field of enterprisecollaborative approval. However, with expanding business scale and continuously updatedbusiness needs, companies have had to adjust business processes to adapt to the new businessenvironment, due to business restructuring involves only a part of the entire business processin normal circumstances, traditional business process reengineering and model managementcould not meet the demand in efficiency, which severely restricted the ability of quicklyupdate in the business processes. Thus, building a workflow management system thatsupporting dynamic changes will promote enterprise’s real-time business update.In order to solve the above problems, a framework of workflow change managementapplication based on meta-model is proposed in this paper. Firstly, researches on the workflowmeta-model which supported workflow changes have been done, as well as workflow changemodeling methods in a variety of ways. Then, the change model management is achievedthrough model validation analysis and version management. Finally, an approach of changemodel data management based on the model instance migration mechanism is put forward,which meet the users’ real-time needs in the case of ensuring the consistent of the dataversion.The main research contents of this paper are as follows:(1) A framework of workflow change management application based on meta-modelThe framework can be divided into three layer, including data access layer, logicalcontrol layer and information exchange layer. The data access layer is responsible for thestorage of change model, change operation information and process application data; thelogical control layer is responsible for the change model construction in different changescenarios, validation analysis of change model, change model data management based on themodel instance migration mechanism; the information exchange layer is responsible for theinteraction between information system and different users and achieving the management ofthe entire workflow change applications. (2) Change modeling based on processFirst, a classification tree of workflow change is brought forward based on the differenttypes of workflow change division and refined according to the change classificationscenarios. Second, on the basis of classification tree of workflow change, a workflow changemeta-model which consisting three sub-models and associated workflow data is proposed.Finally, change operations are designed against the detailed classification scenarios andchange modeling is achieved by implementing change operations.(3) System evolutionary mechanism based on change model managementOn the basis of completion of change modeling, error structure detection algorithm andmodel simulation method are used to verify the correctness of change model and analysis themodel’s rationality; on the basis of model verification and analysis, data fields of thehierarchical version number and sub-model version synchronization are designed to maintainthe model version; on the basis of model version management, model instance migrationmechanism and history data synchronization method of migration instance are applied toachieve the maintenance of change model data, and finally the purpose of system evolution isachieved.Finally, according to the method mentioned in this paper, a prototype system ofworkflow change management based on meta-model is designed and completed. And anexample which uses the approval process management in the production management systemof the Ship Design and Research Institute, using a prototype system to verify changemanagement in two different types of workflow change. The preliminary results show thatinstance-level change and process-level change can be effectively supported by prototypesystem, and the research of this paper has some theoretical value and application prospects.