Workflow Management Based on Objects, Rules, and Roles

Workflow management systems are becoming important not only as key technology in their own wight but they are gaining leverage as key application of database management systems. One of the main issues of workflow management systems, and thus implicitly of database management systems, must be their support for flexibility to cope with frequently changing requirements in an organization. This has been the driving force behind the development of the workflow management system TriGS[flow]. It is based on an object-oriented database management system, enhanced with active concepts in terms of ECA rules and object evolution in terms of roles. In this way, flexible modeling and enactment of business processes is supported allowing changes even during workflow execution. The architecture of TriGS[flow] and ist key concepts for workflow modeling are presented.