Enhancing Flexibility of Workflow Systems

This research is concerned with the problem of software flexibility. Specifically, itaddresses the problem of managing change in workflow management systems.A large change in business requirements naturally leads to a large change inthe supporting software. However, a small change in business requirementsmay lead to a huge change in the supporting software. This is a result of softwaresystems that are built with no consideration to flexibility. The suggestedsolution is based on separating activities from execution rules. Activities areimplemented as a set of loosely coupled services. Services can be replacedwhen necessary. The execution sequence may be changed without the need torewrite or reconstruct a given workflow. The work presented here is based uponongoing research into software application flexibility which focuses on buildingflexible workflow engines.