[Openflow-dev] Workflow Standards vs PROforma

[Bud P. B. <bu...@si...>]

>  > I was hoping to find an open standard workflow model, which
>  > seems to be emerging via WfMC and XML.
>  >
>What about the Workflow model within the OMG?  Does this fit?
>How does it fit with Proforma?  Anyone?

 From what I've seen, Proforma is totally unrelated to workflow standards 
by WfMG, OMG, and IETF.  IMHO, it is mostly concerned with decision support 
and much less with actual workflow.

WfMC's Workflow Handbook 2001 
(http://www.aiim.org/wfmc/information/handbook.htm, I just got it today) 
has an article "Workflow Interoperability Standards for the Internet" that 
nicely describes the evolution of standards.   Here a summary:

"WfMC's Workflow Interoparability Standard (Reference Model defined in 
1994) defines an abstract protocol for peer-topeer interaction of workflow 
enatment services, potentially across business domain boundaries."  ... 
"The Coalition has defined a binding of the standard, which uses 
asynchronous interaction via e-mail as the transport, with MIME encoding of 
the information to be exchanged."

"The OMG Workflow Management Facility standard (aka as the jointFlow 
speicification) is based on the WfMC standards." ...  "The OMG workflow 
standard defines a unified object model covering the various WfMG standards 
(except process definition).  This object model provides the base for 
future evolution of the WfMC standards.  The simple workflow access 
protocol (SWAP) initiative [of the IETF,  discontinued before releasing a 
standard] and the Wf-XML message set are examples of this evolution."

[An interesting critique of the two mentioned standards can be found in a 
SWAP paper (6/1/1999 at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ietfswap/xmlone.html, 
particularly http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ietfswap/xmlone/sld009.htm, 
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ietfswap/xmlone/sld011.htm, and
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ietfswap/xmlone/sld012.htm]

"The SWAP proposal [December 98]attempts to define an Internet-based 
workflow access protocol to instantiate, control, and monitor workflow 
process instances.  SWAP was envisioned as a binding of the jointFlow 
object model and related WfMC standards to an HTTP-based interaction 
protocol [as XML-encoded messages]."  ... "The proposal builds on the 
WebDAV extensions to HTTP to communicate workflow operation 
requests."  SWAP was implemented by several systems (incl. by U.S. Dept. of 
Defense.., IBM, Netscape, Fujitsu).

"The lessons learned from early SWAP implementations led to the initial 
submission of the Wf-XML specification to the WfMC in April 1999.  The 
specification represents the next step in the evolution of the workflow 
interoperability standards."  .. "The WfMC's Wf-XML focuses on a simple 
subset of SWAP for a first version of a standard, with the aim of future 
extension."  ... "...the method of transport for these messages (for 
example, HTTP, e-mail, CORBA, or IIOP) is left to the solution 
providers."  .. "Because of the ubiquitous nature of HTTP, the WfMC has 
specified HTTP as a core transport mechanism for Wf-XML messages." ... ".. 
version 1.0 was [of the Wf-XML standard] was released as an official WfMC 
stanard in May 2000".

There is an e-mail message mentioning an open source implementation of 
Wf-XML  (but nothing visible on the project site):

 From http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-swap/2000Jun/0004.html

<quote>
The Apache-derived Magi Project (magi.endeavors.org) is actively working
on realeasing an installable server, a Wf-XML derived implementation &
parser, a SWAP implementation that leverages our close ties to HTTP and 
WebDAV,
and an embeddable workflow engine--all open source.  Currently you
can download the server and the open MagiDAV implementation.
</quote>

The U.S. Army's Joint Computer-aided Acquisition and Logistics Support 
(JCALS) has is implementing Wf-XML (see 
http://www.aiim.org/wfmc/pr/army20000615workflowpressrelease.html).  Not 
open source, though...

cheers
--bud
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