Managing Evolving Business Workflows through Description-Driven Systems

Title: Managing Evolving Business Workflows through Description-Driven Systems

Authors: Sébastien Gaspard, Florida Estrella, Richard McClatchey, Régis Dindeleux

Abstract: Business systems need to be flexible and adaptable to changing needs. This paper explores a description-driven approach to managing workflows in Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) systems. It introduces the CRISTAL system, which is applied to a manufacturing system called Agilium. The paper compares the approach to other model-driven development approaches and discusses its implications.

Background and Related Works: As businesses evolve, they need to reorganize, diversify, and adapt to stay competitive. This requires flexible, adaptable software systems. Description-driven systems (DDS) separate system descriptions from their instances, allowing them to evolve independently. This approach is applied to EAI workflows.

Methodology: The paper proposes a description-driven approach to managing workflows in EAI systems. It uses CRISTAL, a system developed at CERN, which has two parallel implementations: CRISTAL for CMS and Agilium.

Results: Agilium is an example of the CRISTAL technology applied to a manufacturing system. It demonstrates the principles of model-driven system evolution and integration.

Implications: The description-driven approach enables the management of workflow descriptions and handles system evolution in workflows. It has two parallel implementations, CRISTAL for CMS and Agilium, which demonstrate its effectiveness in different contexts.

In conclusion, the description-driven approach is a promising method for managing evolving business workflows in EAI systems. It allows for independent evolution of system descriptions, providing flexibility and adaptability to changing needs.

Link to Article: https://arxiv.org/abs/0310048v1 Authors: arXiv ID: 0310048v1