工作流管理的过去、现在和未来

工作流管理是一个新兴的研究领域,被誉为信息系统的后勤,它让合适的人或软件在恰当的时间执行正确的上作,使计算机上的业务处理流程自动化。本文用历史的观点对工作流管理的发展历程进行了回顾,揭示了工作流管理对未来信息系统的影响.根据分析当前的工作流管理系统,我们总结出两个十要不足之处:(1)工作流管理系统的定义不明确以及缺乏统一的概念模型,(2)工作流管理系统的系统结构和能力上的不足,并对工作流管理的未来发展趋势从建模和实施两个方面进行了预测.

The Past, Present and Future of Workflow Management

Workflow management is a new research area, and is known as "logistics" of information systems. It can arrange suitable people or software to perform right tasks at right time, and automate business processes. In this paper, we reviewed the evolution of workflow management with a historical view, and showed its strong impact on the future information systems. Through analyzing current workflow management systems(WFMSs), we generalized two deficiencies in current WFMSs: (1) lacking a general conceptual model for common-understanding, (2) limited function and inflexible architecture. We also forecasted the developing tendency of workflow modeling and workflow enactment environment, which are two main aspect of workflow management.