Conceptual modeling of flexible temporal workflows

Abstract

Workflow technology has emerged as one of the leading technologies in modeling, redesigning, and executing business processes. The management of temporal aspects in the definition of a workflow process has been considered only recently in the literature. Currently available Workflow Management Systems ( WfMS ) and research prototypes offer a very limited support for the definition, detection, and management of temporal constraints over business processes. In this article, we propose a new advanced workflow conceptual model for expressing time constraints in business processes and we present a general technique to check different levels of temporal consistency for workflow schemata at process design time: since a time constraint can be satisfied in different ways, we propose a classification of temporal workflows according to the way time constraints are satisfied. Such classification can be used to successfully manage flexible workflows at runtime.