• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.205-217
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• 2009

Recently, many organizations such as companies or institutions have demanded induction of very large-scale workflow management system in order to process a large number of business-instances. Workflow vendors have focused on physical extension of workflow engines based on device-level clustering, so as to provide very large-scale workflow services. Performance improvement of workflow engine by simple physical-connection among computer systems which don't consider logical-level software architecture leads to wastes of time or cost for construction of very large-scale workflow service environment. In this paper, we propose workcase-based workflow architecture and implement a very large-scale workflow management system based on the architecture. We prove that software architectures to be applied on a workflow engine have an effect on scalability and performance through workcase response-time evaluation of our proposed system.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.167-178
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• 2008

This paper addresses the issue of workflow on Grid and P2P, and proposes a layered workflow architecture and its related workflow models that are used for not only distributing workflows' information onto Grid or P2P resources but also scheduling the enactment of workflows. Especially, the most critical rationale of this paper is on the fact that the nature of Grid computing environment is fitted very well into building a platform for the maximally parallel and very large scale workflows that are frequently found in very large scale enterprises. The layered architecture proposed in this paper, which we call Enterprise Workflow Grid Architecture, is targeting on maximizing the usability of computing facilities in the enterprise as well as the scalability of its underlined workflow management system in coping with massively parallel and very large scale workflow applications.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.89-97
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• 2008

Recently, many organizations such as companies or institutions have demanded induction of very large-scale workflow management system in order to process a large number of business-instances. Workflow-related vendors have focused on physical extension of workflow engines based on device-level clustering, so as to provide very large-scale workflow services. Performance improvement of workflow engine by simple physical-connection among computer systems which don't consider logical-level software architecture lead to wastes of time and cost for construction of very large-scale workflow service environment. In this paper, we propose methodology for performance improvement based on logical software architectures of workflow engine. We also evaluate scalable performance between workflow engines using the activity instance based architecture and workcase based architecture, our proposed architecture. Through analysis of this test's result, we can observe that software architectures to be applied on a workflow engine have an effect on scalable performance.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.1702-1721
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• 2019

A workflow process (or business process) management system helps to define, execute, monitor and manage workflow models deployed on a workflow-supported enterprise, and the system is compartmentalized into a modeling subsystem and an enacting subsystem, in general. The modeling subsystem's functionality is to discover and analyze workflow models via a theoretical modeling methodology like ICN, to graphically define them via a graphical representation notation like BPMN, and to systematically deploy those graphically defined models onto the enacting subsystem by transforming into their textual models represented by a standardized workflow process definition language like XPDL. Before deploying those defined workflow models, it is very important to inspect its syntactical correctness as well as its structural properness to minimize the loss of effectiveness and the depreciation of efficiency in managing the corresponding workflow models. In this paper, we are particularly interested in verifying very large-scale and massively parallel workflow models, and so we need a sophisticated analyzer to automatically analyze those specialized and complex styles of workflow models. One of the sophisticated analyzers devised in this paper is able to analyze not only the structural complexity but also the data-sequence complexity, especially. The structural complexity is based upon combinational usages of those control-structure constructs such as subprocesses, exclusive-OR, parallel-AND and iterative-LOOP primitives with preserving matched pairing and proper nesting properties, whereas the data-sequence complexity is based upon combinational usages of those relevant data repositories such as data definition sequences and data use sequences. Through the devised and implemented analyzer in this paper, we are able eventually to achieve the systematic verifications of the syntactical correctness as well as the effective validation of the structural properness on those complicate and large-scale styles of workflow models. As an experimental study, we apply the implemented analyzer to an exemplary large-scale and massively parallel workflow process model, the Large Bank Transaction Workflow Process Model, and show the structural complexity analysis results via a series of operational screens captured from the implemented analyzer.

• Proceedings of the Korea Database Society Conference
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• 1998.09a
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• pp.525-543
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• 1998

This paper proposes a conceptual taxonomy of architectures far workflow management systems. The systematic classification work is based on a framework for workflow architectures. The framework, consisting of generic-level, conceptual-level and implementation-level architectures, provides common architectural principles for designing a workflow management system. We define the taxonomy by considering the possibilities for centralization or distribution of data, control, and execution. That is, we take into account three criteria. How are the major components of a workflow model and system, like activities, roles, actors, and workcases, concretized in workflow architecture？ Which of the components is represented as software modules of the workflow architecture？ And how are they configured and operating in the architecture？ The workflow components might be embodied, as active (processes or threads) modules or as passive (data) modules, in the software architecture of a workflow management system. One or combinations of the components might become software modules in the software architecture. Finally, they might be centralized or distributed. The distribution of the components should be broken into three: Vertically, Horizontally and Fully distributed. Through the combination of these aspects, we can conceptually generate about 64 software Architectures for a workflow management system. That is, it should be possible to comprehend and characterize all kinds of software architectures for workflow management systems including the current existing systems as well as future systems. We believe that this taxonomy is a significant contribution because it adds clarity, completeness, and "global perspective" to workflow architectural discussions. The vocabulary suggested here includes workflow levels and aspects, allowing very different architectures to be discussed, compared, and contrasted. Added clarity is obtained because similar architectures from different vendors that used different terminology and techniques can now be seen to be identical at the higher level. Much of the complexity can be removed by thinking of workflow systems. Therefore, it is used to categorize existing workflow architectures and suggest a plethora of new workflow architectures. Finally, the taxonomy can be used for sorting out gems and stones amongst the architectures possibly generated. Thus, it might be a guideline not only for characterizing the existing workflow management systems, but also for solving the long-term and short-term architectural research issues, such as dynamic changes in workflow, transactional workflow, dynamically evolving workflow, large-scale workflow, etc., that have been proposed in the literature.

• The Journal of Information Technology and Database
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.97-108
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• 1998

This paper proposes a conceptual taxonomy of architectures for workflow management systems. The systematic classification work is based on a framework for workflow architectures. The framework, consisting of generic-level, conceptual-level and implementation-level architectures, provides common architectural principles for designing a workflow management system. We define the taxonomy by considering the possibilities for centralization or distribution of data, control, and execution. That is, we take into account three criteria. How are the major components of a workflow model and system, like activities, roles, actors, and workcases, concretized in workflow architecture. Which of the components is represented as software modules of the workflow architecture\ulcorner And how are they configured and operating in the architecture\ulcorner The workflow components might be embodied, as active (processes or threads) modules or as passive (data) modules, in the software architecture of a workflow management system. One or combinations of the components might become software modules in the software architecture. Finally, they might be centralized or distributed. The distribution of the components should be broken into three: Vertically, Horizontally and Fully distributed. Through the combination of these aspects, we can conceptually generate about 64 software Architectures for a workflow management system. That is, it should be possible to comprehend and characterize all kinds of software architectures for workflow management systems including the current existing systems as well as future systems. We believe that this taxonomy is a significant contribution because it adds clarity, completeness, and global perspective to workflow architectural discussions. The vocabulary suggested here includes workflow levels and aspects, allowing very different architectures to be discussed, compared, and contrasted. Added clarity is obtained because similar architectures from different vendors that used different terminology and techniques can now be seen to be identical at the higher level. Much of the complexity can be removed by thinking of workflow systems. Therefore, it is used to categorize existing workflow architectures and suggest a plethora of new workflow architectures. Finally, the taxonomy can be used for sorting out gems and stones amongst the architectures possibly generated. Thus, it might be a guideline not only for characterizing the existing workflow management systems, but also for solving the long-term and short-term architectural research issues, such as dynamic changes in workflow, transactional workflow, dynamically evolving workflow, large-scale workflow, etc., that have been proposed in the literature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2004.04b
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• pp.67-69
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• 2004

기업 및 조직 내외에서 이루어지고 있는 대량 작업들을 처리하기 위하여 기존의 워크플로우 시스템보다 더욱 대형화된 처리를 지원하는 워크플로우 시스템의 등장이 요구되어지고 있다. 기업 인프라는 급격히 발전하고 있지만 그에 반해 워크플로우 시스템은 처리적인 측면에서 이를 뒷받침하지 못하고 있다. 현재의 시스템 환경의 한계를 극복하며 대량의 비즈니스 작업들을 처리해내기 위해서는 이에 대한 극복 방안이 마련되어야 한다. 본 논문에서는 극복 .방안의 일환으로 다수 사용자들의 요청에 의해 발생되는 프로세스 인스턴스인 워크케이스에 대한 효과적인 생성 기법에 대해 제시하고 이러한 방법을 기반으로 하여 실제적인 구현 및 테스트를 통해 결과를 도출해 내고자 한다.

• Annual Conference of KIPS
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.43-46
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• 2000

최근에는 기업에서 처리되는 업무 형태가 그 절차도 더욱 많아지고 절차 간 흐름도 복잡해지고 있다. 여러 기업들이 관여되는, 이른바 대규모화되어 가고 있다. 워크플로우 시스템은 업무를 이루고 있는 단위 업무 처리에 적합하도록 객체 단위로 설계되어 있다. 적용 분야와 경우에 따라서는 이러한 생성되어 수행중인 객체들이 수만에서 수백만개가 여러 기업에 분산되어 존재하기도 한다. 따라서 기존의 단일서버-클라이언트 형태의 관리 도구로는 이러한 대규모 시스템을 지원하기에는 서버구조가 매우 비효율적이고, 서비스에도 많은 문제점을 안고 있다. 본 논문에서는 기업의 관리 모듈을 규모에 따라 워크플로우 엔진에 의존적으로 분산된 형태로 데이터와 기능들을 분산 배치시키고 메인 관리기에서 통합하여 관리함으로써 운용 서버의 부하를 줄이고, 가용성을 높일 수 있는 방안들을 추출하여 설계하고 구현하였다.