Separation of process logic and business logic

Workflow technology can be quickly applied and developed thanks to its advanced philosophy-separation of process logic and business logic. For a process-based business, it can be seen as an organic combination of two elements: business elements and process elements. The business element represents the specific task that should be completed in each step of the process and the business characteristics of the entire process, while the process element expresses the logical relationship among the steps and conditions in the process. By separating process logic from business logic, you can focus on the characteristics and problems of process logic and establish a general process management system independent of specific services, to support the operation of various process-based businesses. This general process management system is a Workflow Management System, which can be combined with a variety of business processing modules to become a process-oriented business system for user needs.

Since the establishment of the International Workflow Management Alliance in 1993, it has been 15 or six years. The workflow technology has been well developed and workflow products have emerged one after another. However, according to the analysis and summary by researchers, at present, more than 30% of process logic relationships cannot be well supported in the workflow management system. The problems encountered in the development of workflows are worth noting. These problems can be reflected from the current situation in the process-based business field. The following are some outstanding phenomena in the current process-based business field:

1) The process-based business in many places is not built on an automated process-based system, but it is still a combination of traditional customer, server systems and manual process management;

2) A considerable number of process-based business processes are not based on workflows, but specialized process-based business systems;

3) workflow vendors generally process their workflow software and business, instead of simply providing workflow software platforms.ProgramIt is integrated and sold as a whole "solution.

The existence of these phenomena obviously deviates from the goal of the workflow, indicating that the concept of "process logic and business logic separation" advocated by the workflow has not been well implemented. There are many reasons for this phenomenon. For example, the business elements are related to the process logic, and the business elements have a certain impact on the process logic. In a real workflow environment, business elements may run as business processes increase or decrease. changes to these business elements may affect the entire business process and cause uncertainty in the process. Process Reconstruction is a more complex issue than process uncertainty. Process Reconstruction refers to the changes to the process system caused by changes in the resources and environment of the process-based business. Currently, it is quite difficult for a process-based system to make changes as needed.

So far, the problem of process uncertainty and process reconstruction has not been well solved, leading to the concept of separation of "business logic and process logic" of workflow cannot be truly implemented in reality. On the surface, the coupling between business elements and process logic seems to conflict with the concept of workflow and become an insurmountable contradiction. However, from another perspective, we can find that the root cause is that the current workflow model cannot fully consider the dynamic nature of the process, new process models and management methods should be proposed to solve such problems.

Event-Rule mechanism is a good way to solve dynamic problems. By capturing events, the system tries to process the events according to the status of the events and the system environment, you can flexibly respond to events. Introducing the event-Rule mechanism into the workflow model will fundamentally change the difficulty of traditional workflow technical methods in process management.