A framework for dynamic workflow interoperation using multi-subprocess task

When a workflow process is related to many organizations and a diverse set of applications at run time, many approaches usually use subprocess tasks to represent other systems' services: the subprocess task represents a single service. However, if a subprocess task needs to represent multiple subprocesses and moreover the number and execution flow of them are not known until run-time, conventional approaches cannot handle the situation because they must pre-define all the potentially reachable paths. In this paper we propose a framework for dynamic workflow interoperation using the multi-subprocess task. In the framework, the multi-subprocess task is designed to handle preliminarily unknown multiple subprocesses. Based on the multi-subprocess task, four major components are defined and implemented to support the dynamic workflow interoperation. We analyzed our framework using an example scenario and found that the framework brings many advantages in terms of automaticity, adaptability, business efficiency, and physical resources.