E-BUSINESS WORKFLOW MODELLING AND EXECUTION TOOLS T.Stoilov, K.Stoilova Department Hierarchical Systems, Institute of Computer and Communication Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Acad. G. Bonchev str. bl.2, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria todor@hsi.iccs.bas.bg, k.stoilova@hsi.iccs.bas.bg Abstract – This paper presents the workflow management systems as a tool for modelling, executing and monitoring e-business processes. The automation of processes and particular the business processes is done by workflow systems. There are two main groups of workflow technologies for the specification and execution of all workflows - choreography languages and orchestration languages. An analysis of the most developed workflow technologies is presented below. Keywords – Modelling, E-Business, Workflow Management Systems I. INTRODUCTION One widely accepted definition of workflow comes from the Workflow Management Coalition [3]:“Workflow is the computerized facilitation or automation of a business proc- ess, in whole or part.” Another definition is given in [1]: “Workflow management comes from office automation area, where all kinds of documents need to be digitalized and transferred among co- workers. Nowadays, the workflow management attracts a lot of attention due to its ability in modelling, executing, and monitoring processes. The processes can be not only the business processes, but also any procedures that need to be presented and managed. But the motivation for its booming is its promising usage in managing business proc- esses.” “The benefits of applying workflow technology to business process management are as follows: - The business processes are explicitly defined, so that the responsibilities and the coordination relations are clearly determined. - It is easy to optimize the business process because of their explicit definitions. - Business processes are modularized and these modules can be reorganized by the Workflow Management Systems (WFMS) to form new business processes, so as to react quickly to unexpected changing business needs and condi- tions. - WFMS can track daily operations. - WFMS integrates applications on different platforms into a business process. - WFMS provides personal workplaces. - WFMS stem separates business logic of a process from the tasks themselves in the process. Therefore, the user in the workflow system does not have to deal with the route of the business process, but only concentrates on the task itself.” [1] A general task for the development of the workflow system in the current business activities is the implementation of principles of the automatic control for business systems. These systems do not consist of pure technical components, but they integrate both human and human-computer activi- ties and non-automatic interactions [5]. Thus, the imple- mentation of the principles of the automation will benefit the exploitation behaviour of the business systems. The automation principles for the workflow system can be implemented, solving two general problems: • To define a common framework for the different stages of the workflow system modelling, specifica- tion and execution of business processes and imple- mentation workflows. This problem relates to the domain of the application of standardization ap- proaches and methodologies. • To develop and to use a set of software products, re- lated to the main functional stages of the workflow system design and deployment. These problems con- cern the choice, utilization and integration of soft- ware products, related to the business model devel- opment, specification of business workflows, and software simulation of business processes and busi- ness execution of workflow tasks. A set of solutions allowing modelling, specifying and exe- cuting business workflows using formal languages that can possibly be executed in specialized runtime environments is presented below. The diversity of these technologies and the existing workflow specification activities makes eBusi- ness very complex to understand and the choice of solutions very hard to achieve, more particularly for SMEs, which are small structures that, in general, cannot afford extensive researches and developments on their own. Here can be defined two key aspects that affect the entire life cycle of any eBusiness development: the choice of a choreography language and the choice of an orchestration language. These two groups of workflow technologies are central to the specification and execution of all workflows: • Choreography is concerned with global, multiparty, peer-to-peer collaborations where business entities in- teract in long-lived state and coordinated fashion re- gardless of any programming model or supporting plat- form used. Choreography languages (e.g. BPSS, WS- CDL, etc) cannot be directly executed (they are mainly descriptive) and require to be translated (mapped) to an orchestration language in order to be executed. • Orchestration focuses on the behaviour of a single business entity, it is a hub and spoke model where a controller residing at a single location locally enforces