A constraint programming approach for workflow applications

This paper proposes a constraint programming approach for workflow applications in which a slip is regarded as a tuple of the RDB model. A workflow is considered to be a series of database updating and constraint maintenance processes in this case. The proposed method utilizes pre-conditions and post-conditions in a constraint programming style for an agent that interprets and executes these constraints. The method has been experimentally applied to a real application and the following advantages have been confirmed: (1) No programming for opposite directional flow to correct the value of an erroneous item when an error is detected in the workflow downstream stage, and (2) Small semantic gap between the domain knowledge and the declarative programming description.