E-Services are typically delivered point-to-point. However, the eservice environment creates the opportunity for providing value-added, integrated services, which are delivered by composing existing e-services. In order to enable organizations to pursue this business opportunity we have developed eFlow, a system that supports the specification, enactment, and management of composite e-services, modeled as processes that are enacted by a service process engine. Composite e-services have to cope with a highly dynamic business environment in terms of services and service providers. In addition, the increased competition forces companies to provide customized services to better satisfy the needs of every individual customer. Ideally, service processes should be able to transparently adapt to changes in the environment and to the needs of different customers with minimal or no user intervention. In addition, it should be possible to dynamically modify service process definitions in a simple and effective way to manage cases where user intervention is indeed required. In this paper we show how eFlow achieves these goals.

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In workflows for e-commerce and Web-services applications, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying Quality of Service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of services. The management of QoS metrics directly impacts the success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflows, the underlying workflow system must accept the specifications and be able to estimate, monitor, and control the QoS rendered to customers. In this paper, we present a predictive QoS model that makes it possible to compute the quality of service for workflows automatically based on atomic task QoS attributes. To this end, we present a model that specifies QoS and describe an algorithm and a simulation system in order to compute, analyze and monitor workflow QoS metrics. 1

Case handling is a new paradigm for supporting flexible and knowledge intensive business processes. It is strongly based on data as the typical product of these processes.

Abstract — The foundation of a process model lies in its structural specifications. Using a generic process modeling language for workflows, we show how a structural specification may contain deadlock and lack of synchronization conflicts that could compromise the correct execution of workflows. In general, identification of such conflicts is a computationally complex problem and requires development of effective algorithms specific for the target modeling language. We present a visual verification approach and algorithm that employs a set of graph reduction rules to identify structural conflicts in process models for the given workflow modeling language. We also provide insights into the correctness and complexity of the reduction process. Finally, we show how the reduction algorithm may be used to count possible instance subgraphs of a correct process model. The main contribution of the paper is a new technique for satisfying well-defined correctness criteria in process models.

Current workflow management systems still lack support for dynamic and automatic workflow adaptations. However, this functionality is a major requirement for next-generation workflow systems to provide sufficient flexibility to cope with unexpected failure events. We present the concepts and implementation of AGENTWORK, an event-based workflow management system supporting automated workflow adaptations in a comprehensive way. In particular, AGENTWORK uses temporal estimates to determine which remaining parts of running workflows are affected by an exception and is able to predictively perform suitable workflow adaptations. This helps ensure that necessary adaptations are performed in time with minimal user interaction which is especially valuable in complex applications such as for medical treatments.

Workflow management has been a research area that attracted significant interest in the last decade. In spite of this, little consensus has been reached as to what the essential ingredients of workflow specification languages should be. Consequently many workflow management systems have been developed that are based on different paradigms and include different feature sets. These differences result in various levels of suitability and expressive power.

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) have been used to support various types of business processes for more than a decade now. In ecommerce processes, suppliers and customers define a binding agreement or contract between the two parties, specifying quality of service (QoS) items such as products or services to be delivered, deadlines, quality of products, and cost of service. Management of such QoS directly impacts success of organizations participating in e-commerce. Organizations operating in modem markets require an excellent degree of quality of service management. Products and services must be available to customers with well-defined specifications. A good management of quality leads to the creation of quality products and services, which in mm fulfills customer expectations and achieves customer satisfaction. Therefore, when services or products are created or managed using workflow processes, the underlying WfMS must accept the specification, be able to predict, monitor, and control the QoS rendered to customers. To achieve these objectives the first step is to develop an adequate QoS model for workflow processes and develop methods to compute QoS.

... This paper presents the verification tool Woflan. Woflan analyzes workflow process definitions downloaded from commercial workflow products using state-of-the-art Petri-net-based analysis techniques. This paper describes the functionality of Woflan emphasizing diagnostics to locate the source of a design error. Woflan is evaluated via two case studies, one involving twenty groups of students designing a complex workflow process and one involving an industrial workflow process designed by Staffware Benelux. The results are encouraging and show that Woflan guides the user in finding and correcting errors in the design of workflows.

Today, companies are using the Web to connect with their back-end systems and perform e-commerce transactions. The next chapter of the Internet story is the evolution of today's access/content focused portals into eservices hubs. While many traditional services become available on the Internet as e-services, almost all of them are single point services. In order to offer higher value, end-to-end services, it should be possible to compose, customize, and deploy e-services in a very flexible and efficient way.

. The foundation of a process model lies in its control flow specifications. Using a generic process modeling language for workflows, we show how a control flow specification may contain certain structural conflicts that could compromise its correct execution. In general, identification of such conflicts is a computationally complex problem and requires development of effective algorithms specific for target system language. We present a visual verification approach and algorithm that employs a set of graph reduction rules to identify structural conflicts in process models for a generic workflow modeling language. We also provide insights into the correctness and complexity of the reduction process. The main contribution of the paper is a new technique for satisfying well-defined correctness criteria in process models. 1 Introduction The workflow technology provides a flexible and appropriate environment to develop and maintain next generation of component-oriented enterpri...