2003-10-30-workflow-everywhere.html

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layout: post
title: "Workflow Everywhere"
permalink: workflow-everywhere.html
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<p>I just caught the latest workflow-related open source project <a href="http://www.theserverside.com/home/thread.jsp?thread_id=22179">announcement</a> over on <a href="http://www.theserverside.com/">TheServerSide.com</a>. There is YAJWP! (<strong>Y</strong>et <strong>A</strong>nother <strong>J</strong>ava <strong>W</strong>orkflow <strong>P</strong>roject, and that isn't necessarily bad.)</p>

<p><a href="http://bonita.forge.objectweb.org/">Bonita</a> is just the tip of the iceberg in the YAJWP world. Just in the <a href="http://www.objectforge.org">ObjectWeb</a> universe, there is also an <a href="http://xml.coverpages.org/wf-xml.html">XPDL</a>-based designer called <a href="http://jawe.enhydra.org/">JaWE</a> and an execution engine called <a href="http://shark.enhydra.org/">Shark</a>. There is also <a href="http://www.jbpm.org/">jBPM</a> (which doesn't use XPDL), <a href="http://wfmopen.sourceforge.net/">WfMOpen</a> (which does use XPDL), and the list goes on. (I think that <a href="http://www.manageability.org">Carlos</a> has the <a href="http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/workflow_in_java">longest list</a> that I've seen.)</p>

<p>Of course, this all begs the question of what workflow actually <em>is</em>. The WfMC has a reasonable right to provide a definition, and they <a href="http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/Workflow_An_Introduction.pdf">define</a> it as the natural extension of paper-passing into the automated world, specifically where an automated system assigns, passes, and tracks the work. Most technologists take a looser definition, however, and while I don't claim to be able to answer that question conclusively, I do claim that this is a manifestation of people looking for betters ways to model and implement coarse applications. The use of the term "workflow" connotes the involvement of a human element through aspects of web applications, document management, or other applications. (<a href="http://www.micro-workflow.com/">Dragos Manolescu</a> has one of my favorite perspectives on process-oriented programming in general.)</p>

<p>The unfortunate thing for both vendors (be they commercial entities or open source projects or both) and customers is that there is no clearer, crisper definition of workflow than as a coarsely defined application with a human element. (And what application doesn't include a human element? The presence of a user interface is actually part of the <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=application">dictionary definition</a> of a software application.) </p>