Workflow Management Coalition

Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) is a consortium, formed to define standards for the interoperability of workflow management systems. It was founded in May 1993 as an offshoot of the Black Forest Group with original members including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, ICL, Staffware and approximately 300 software and services firms in the business software sector. Since its founding, the use of XML has become more widespread and today its focus is principally around process definition file interchange, using the standard XPDL. The other WfMC-created standard in use today is Wf-XML, an extension of. In contrast with BPEL, XPDL is not a compiled executable programming language, but a process design format for storing the visual diagram and process syntax of business process models, as well as extended product attributes.

Workflow Reference Model

The Workflow Reference Model was published first in 1995 and still forms the basis of most BPM and workflow software systems in use today. It was developed from the generic workflow application structure by identifying the interfaces which enable products to interoperate at a variety of levels. All workflow systems contain a number of generic components which interact in a defined set of ways; different products will typically exhibit different levels of capability within each of these generic components. To achieve interoperability between workflow products a standardised set of interfaces and data interchange formats between such components is necessary. A number of distinct interoperability scenarios can then be constructed by reference to such interfaces, identifying different levels of functional conformance as appropriate to the range of products in the market.

XPDL (XML Process Definition Language)

An XML based language for describing a process definition, developed by the WfMC. Version 1.0 was released in 2002. Version 2.0 was released in Oct 2005. The goal of XPDL is to store and exchange the process diagram, to allow one tool to model a process diagram, and another to read the diagram and edit, another to "run" the process model on an XPDL-compliant BPM engine, and so on. For this reason, XPDL is not an executable programming language like BPEL, but specifically a process design format that literally represents the "drawing" of the process definition. Thus it has ‘XY' or vector coordinates, including lines and points that define process flows. This allows an XPDL to store a one-to-one representation of a BPMN process diagram. For this reason, XPDL is effectively the file format or "serialization" of BPMN, as well as any non-BPMN design method or process model which use in their underlying definition the XPDL meta-model (there are presently about 60 tools which use XPDL for storing process models.)

Wf-XML

Wf-XML is designed and implemented as an extension to the [http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=asap OASIS Asynchronous Service Access Protocol (ASAP)] . ASAP provides a standardized way that a program can start and monitor a program that might take a long time to complete. It provides the capability to monitor the running service, and be informed of changes in its status. Wf-XML extends this by providing additional standard web service operations that allow sending and retrieving the “program” or definition of the service which is provided. A process engine has this behavior of providing a service that lasts a long time, and also being programmable by being able to install process definitions.

Awards

The Workflow Management Coalition sponsors a two annual award programs. The "Global Excellence in BPM & Workflow Award" is intended to recognize organizations that have implemented particularly innovative workflow solutions. Every year between ten and fifteen workflow solutions are recognized in this manner. The Marvin L. Manheim Award For Significant Contributions in the Field of Workflow is given to one person every year in recognition of individual contributions to workflow and BPM standards. This award commemorates Marvin Manheim who played a key motivational role in the founding of the WfMC.

References

* [http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/tc003v11.pdf Reference Model - The Workflow Reference Model (WFMC-TC-1003, 19-Jan-95, 1.1) 211Kb pdf]
* [http://www.wfmc.org/researchreports/glossariesfaq.htm WfMC FAQ Page]
* [http://www.wfmc.org/membership/memberdirectory.htm WfMC Membership Page]
* [http://www.wfmc.org/membership/documentofunderstanding.htm WfMC Governance Document (DOU)]

Bibliography

* Mike Havey, "Essential Business Process Modeling", 'Chapter Seven. The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC)', O'Reilly, August 2005 ISBN 0-596-00843-0
* "The WfMC glossary", Workflow handbook 1997, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997, ISBN 0-471-96947-8
* Schulze, W., Bohm, M., and Meyer-Wegener, K., "Services of Workflow Objects and Workflow Meta-Objects in OMG-compliant environments", Workshop on Business Object Design and Implementation II, OOPSLA, 1996.
* Kaya, Atila, masters thesis, "Workflow Interoperability: The WfMC Reference Model and an Implementation", 2001, [http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/kaya01workflow.html CiteSeer Reference]
* "Pockets of Flexibility in Workflow Specification", Springer Berlin / Heidelberg 2001
* "A Portable Approach to Exception Handling in Workflow Management Systems", Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS) 2006 International Conference, references WfMC standards in the area of workflow. (DOI 10.1007/11914853_13)
* "A Workflow Modeling Framework Enhanced with Problem-Solving Knowledge", from "Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems", (DOI 10.1007/11893011_79) reprinted in "Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems" references the WfMC Workflow Reference Model.
* Gabrielle D'Annunzio Cavalcanti, Pedro Porfírio Muniz Farias, "Groupware: Design, Implementation, and Use", chapter: 'Interoperability of Workflow Engines Based on Agents Using Semantics', discusses the relevance of WfMC standards
* Christian Hastedt-Marckwardt, "Ein Beitrag der IT zur Geschäftsprozeß-Orientierung & -Optimierung - Grundlagen, Standards und Trends", (DOI 10.1007/s002870050129) Informatik-Spektrum, Volume 22, Number 2 / April, 1999, discusses both WfMC standards as well as Simple Workflow Access Protocol.
* Bill Karakostas, Dimitris Panagiotakis, George Fakas, "Workflow Requirements Modelling Using XML", Requirements Engineering, Issue: Volume 7, Number 3 / September, 2002 discusses XML models that follows the Workflow Management Coalition interoperability standards.
* Christian Zirpins, Giacomo Piccinelli, "Evolution of Service Processes by Rule Based Transformation" DOI 10.1007/1-4020-8155-3_16 "IFIP International Federation for Information Processing" Volume 146/2004 "Building the E-Service Society" ...builds on the standard workflow meta-model proposed by the WfMC (Workflow Management Coalition). The change logic is expressed by transformation rules...
* Wil M.P. van der Aalst, "Business Process Management Demystified: A Tutorial on Models, Systems and Standards for Workflow Management", Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol 3098/2004.
* Jianxun Liu, Shensheng Zhang, Jinming Hu, "A case study of an inter-enterprise workflow-supported supply chain management system", Information and Management, Volume 42, Issue 3 (March 2005), Pages: 441 - 454, ISSN:0378-7206

External links

* [http://www.wfmc.org/ Workflow Management Coalition Website]
* [http://www.kswenson.com/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Main Workflow and BPM Wiki (featuring WfMC)]
* [http://www.bpm.com/FeatureRO.asp?FeatureId=232 XPDL - The Silent Workhorse of BPM ]
* [http://www.workflownp.org.uk/project/default_introduction.asp Enterprise Workflow National Project] - The office of the UK Prime Minister requests that all workflow projects in the UK follow WfMC standards.