Workflow Future Plans

ACS Documentation : Workflow : Workflow Future Plans

All the existing features and UIs will be continually improved to better serve users' needs. But there are also entirely new areas that we're planning to explore. These are:

• XML Import/Export. Import/export workflow process definitions in XML. We'd like to conform to the WfMC standard (warning: PDF) on the subject, but since it's currently based on a proprietary file format, we'll wait till they change it to be based on XML.

• Extension with color. By letting tokens carry values themselves, we can implement parallel routing without a predetermined number of concurrent threads of execution. Color is a standard extension of Petri Nets, and thus straight-forward to implement in that all the hard work of defining the semantics have already been done by others. But it will not be that easy to write it in PL/SQL. The problematic part is storing arbitrary values. One option is storing them simply as a chunk of XML, but it might be too slow.

• Analysis of workflows. At a minimum we'll want a way to ensure that a workflow net is well-constructed, i.e. no deadlocks, we can't end up in inconsistent states, such as "workflow is not finished but there are no tasks to perform either", etc. But more importantly, the underlying model we're using (Petri nets) lends itself very easily to simulation and analysis of performance and throughput, discover bottlenecks, and lots of other interesting features of workflows. The analysis can both be on simulated data and on historic data.

• Cooperation with other systems. The workflow package should integrate with other software, including other workflow management systems. The XML import/export is one aspect of this.