The quintessential feature of the open workflow paradigm is the ability to construct a custom context-specific workflow specification on the fly in response to unpredictable and evolving circumstances by exploiting the knowhow and services available within a given spatiotemporal context.
Executing the command java edu.wustl.cse.mobilab.openworkflow.shell.SimpleApp -showui
will run the example from our paper
(Technical Report).
In this example, a professor, a department chair, and a department librarian are in a department meeting. The professor wants to register a new class.
Each participant knows some workflow fragments:
The professor enters a description of the problem he would like to solve into his mobile device.
The open workflow system on the professor's device gathers the fragments and constructs a workflow that meets his needs.
Each task is allocated to a host according to their capabilities and schedule. Each device will execute the appropriate service when it is in the right location, the starting time is correct, and the required input messages have been received. (In this example, tasks are assigned locations arbitrarily.) Here we can see the professor's schedule, with his assigned task and the travel time necessary to reach the required location.
In fact, the device has added an alert to tell the professor that he needs to start traveling soon to meet his commitments.
The professor begins traveling.
When all the preconditions have been met, the device will execute the service. In this case, the service provides a form that the professor needs to fill in to create a class.
Once the professor submits the form, the syllabus information is sent to the department chairman's device, as the syllabus is required for the chairman to approve the class. When the information is received, the chairman's device executes the "Approve Class" service, presenting a customized form to the department chairman.
When the department chair completes the form, the approval will be transmitted to the next participant's device, which will execute the "register class" service and so on.
Here you can find the source code to our open workflow system.
The Open Workflow system currently runs on J2SE version 5 or greater. The system can be built using Apache Ant or IntelliJ Idea
You can download snapshot distributions below:
Note that the Open Workflow system is still pre-release software.
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