Web service based architecture for workflow management systems

With limitations in nature, current workflow management systems are insufficient to meet the arising requirements from the evolving e-Business applications such as global running, process migration, inter-organisational cooperation etc. For this reason, this paper proposes a new architecture for workflow management systems, with an emphasis on supporting inter-organisational interoperability, flexibility, reliability and scalability, based on the Web service technology. With provision of a novel agreement management service and an enhanced definition template library, this architecture offers full support to business process collaborations among participating organisations, including both the horizontal and vertical partitioning schemes.