A summary of dynamic business workflow engine Superflow

Chapter One background and objectives

I have studied the work flow engine technology for many years, as the research result Superflow, already has many mature applications. I am willing to put these bits of accumulated dedication out, and everyone to share the fun and bitterness of learning.

Some people say that 35-year-old programmer in the twilight years, I am 36 this year, just learned the true meaning of the program life.

§1-1 Development Background

The process of enterprise operation is essentially human, the optimization and disposition of resources such as wealth and property are not reflected in the reasonable flow of information flow, capital flow, logistics, value flow and so on, as the social division of labor becomes more and more concrete, cooperation has become the theme, and the embodiment form of cooperation is necessarily a complete and efficient workflow. The activity process of the enterprise with management is necessarily orderly, which embodies the reasonable work flow. Thus the workflow is ubiquitous.

However, the workflow information system that the enterprise spends money to buy is often designed by the software developers for most of the common enterprise process, it is difficult to meet the personality requirements of different enterprises, the result is that the enterprise has purchased the workflow software, but must also spend a lot of financial resources to require software developers to make two development And once the business process changes, it may lead to many subsequent development and maintenance.

The cause of the above phenomenon is that almost all business process systems are the enterprise's business logic and software system control logic bundled together, so that once the business logic changes, will be a comprehensive impact on the software system control logic, and therefore must modify a large number of source code and even redevelopment.

Under this background, we developed a dynamic business workflow engine Superflow. The middle-tier application platform solves the above problems effectively.

§1-2 Development Target

The Superflow is designed for the following purposes:

Isolating the control logic of the software system and the business logic of the enterprise makes the change of the business logic transparent to the control logic.

The business information system developed by this engine can tailor the personalized business process according to the specific business demand, without modifying the control logic, even without modifying the source code.

Provides a flexible, rich standard development interface that enables developers to customize and augment modules on the platform using their own custom development tools.

Multi-layer Distributed component technology is adopted to make the advanced technology and the robustness of the application.

Provides load balancing and fault tolerance for applications.

Workflow automation and enterprise application building blocks.

Chapter II Process and results

§2-1 Development process

I. The source of the project and the proposal of the concept

In the long term software development and enterprise Workflow application implementation process, we found that the Enterprise Workflow application in the emergent individual specificity, but also exists in general.

Firstly, the control logic of workflow application system in different enterprises is basically similar. With the accumulation of project experience, similar applications have comparability, especially the portability of code. To avoid duplication of development, can we envisage a common development tool to avoid repetitive development of the control logic parts of similar applications?

Second, the most vexing part of the application development process is the ever-changing business needs. The change of requirements during the development process will lead to demand re analysis and code reconfiguration, and the change of demand during the operation will lead to the "snowball effect" applied by the enterprise. So, do we envision a common development tool that can adapt to the changing needs of the enterprise and minimize or even be used for two development?

Thirdly, all activities of enterprise operation are not reflected as workflow, and the workflow is universal. By extension, then, do we envision a common development tool to meet the current pervasive development of enterprise applications?

In the face of many problems raised by enterprises and the complexity of the research and development process, we have sprouted an attempt to solve the complex workflow application of enterprises. Through systematic argumentation and investigation, and supplemented by relevant mathematical means, we have formed our original workflow application model and technology system.