Abstract:

The idea of separating process logic from business logic is promoted by workflow. However,it’s hard to be carried out in reality because of the ubiquitous dynamic relevance between process and business in the business process. Process control is usually coupled with business process in the form of program code,which makes process modeling complicated and brings a heavy burden to process reconfiguration.We analyze the Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC) process meta-model,which indicates that the limitations of the model in the expression of process logic cause the difficulty of supporting convenient reconfiguration of business process.So a new process meta-modelcalled  EventStateRule (ESR ) meta-model, is presented.Some elements are added to the proposed model,such as events,states and the rules with which the dynamic relevance between the process and the business can be normally expressed by means of process definition.The boundary between process logic and business logic becomes explicit under the framework of our model,which helps to separate process logic from business logic far better.Besides,rigid process and flexible process can be both modeled by using unified process definition.When process logic varies,process definition can be modified on different model layers according to variation requirements, thereby,portable reconfiguration of the process is implemented.

Key words: workflow;process meta-model;process logic;dynamic relevance between the process and the business;portable reconfiguration