Global transaction support for workflow management systems: from formal specification to practical implementation

In this paper, we present an approach to global transactionmanagementinworkflowenvironments.Thetransaction mechanism is based on the well-known notion of compensation, but extended to deal with both arbitrary process structures to allow cycles in processes and safepoints to allow partial compensation of processes. We present a formal specification of the transaction model and transaction management algorithms in set and graph theory, providing clear, unambiguous transaction semantics. The specification is straightforwardly mapped to a modular architecture, the implementation of which is first applied in a testing environment, then in the prototype of a commercial workflow management system. The modular nature of the resulting system allows easy distrising middleware technology. The path from abstract semantics specification to concrete, real-world implementation of a workflow transaction mechanism is thus covered in a complete and coherent fashion. As such, this paper provides a comple...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: VLDB
• Authors: Paul W. P. J. Grefen, Jochem Vonk, Peter M. G. Apers
• Keywords: Database, Transaction Management Algorithms, Unambiguous Transaction Semantics, VLDB 2001, Workflow Transaction Mechanism