Extended workflow flexibility using rule-based adaptation patterns with eventing semantics

Abstract

In several industry scenarios, an existing reference workflow often has to be adapted according to specific context factors, which might even change at runtime. The involved change operations are however usually restricted to simple constructs like task deletion or insertion. Existing approaches lack the explicit consideration of eventing paradigms for modeling reactive parts of a workflow and combining them with context-awareness. In this paper, we present a maintenance service delivery usecase and show how hierarchical context rules tailor the workflow to changing data contexts. We propose to extend existing basic change operations with a pattern catalogue that especially captures event-based adaptation semantics for modeling languages like BPMN2 and show how a part of our solution was implemented in jBoss Drools.