[Zope3-dev] WORKFLOW: Notes on WFMC and XPDL

[Jim Fulton]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
> I've been studying some literature on workflow, in preparation for
> proposing an activity-based workflow framework for Zope 3.  The
> Workflow-Management Coalition (WFMC) has published a number of
> documents and standards:
> 
>   http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs.htm
> 
> to promote interoperability of workflow systems.  The WFMC standards
> are interesting for two (somewhat obvious) reasons:
> 
> - They represent years of industry experience.
> 
> - They provide interfaces that it would be useful, for
>   interoperability, for Zope-based workflow systems to support
> 
> One of the more important standards is the XML-based Workflow Process
> Description Language (XPDL,
> http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/TC-1025_10_xpdl_102502.pdf), which
> specifies both an interchange format and process-definition
> architecture.  The WFMC/XPDL model is not without it's limitations
> (see, for example:
> http://tmitwww.tm.tue.nl/research/patterns/download/ce-xpdl.pdf), but
> it seems like a good place to start.

I've begun implementing a workflow engine that can execute
xpdl-defined models.  I think the documentation:

   http://svn.zope.org/Zope3/trunk/src/zope/wfmc/README.txt?rev=28689&view=markup

should be useful for understanding how this works, and, in particular,
how this fits in with the rest of an application.

Jim

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