Merging workflows: A new perspective on connecting business processes [An article from: Decision Support Systems]

This digital document is a journal article from Decision Support Systems, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper describes the concept of workflow merge and methods for merging business processes. We grouped merges in four categories according to the type of merge: sequential, parallel, conditional, and iterative, and describe the corresponding algorithms for performing these operations. We give results that allow us to determine whether a merge operation is sound. It is shown that to avoid invalid merges, one should choose merge points between which a sub-workflow, called a merge region, is well structured. These findings can provide useful guidance for future workflow merge research. We also raise issues of more complex merge problems, such as merge conflicts, semantic ambiguities and workflow splits.