Implementing SOA: Total Architecture in Practice

Chapter 42. Process Management and Workflow

As business processes grow increasingly complex, managing them increases in complexity as well. This makes the management of the process an important target for automation. Chapter 29 introduced the basic notion of a process manager, a component whose role it is to manage the execution of a process. The requirement for this type of component arises frequently enough that a class of commercial components has arisen to address this need. These components are generally referred to as workflow engines. Workflow engines are process management frameworks that are configured to play the management role with respect to one or more business processes. These products have an explicit representation of the process ...