1996 Reports

A 3-level Atomicity Model for Decentralized Workflow Management Systems

Ben-Shaul, Israel Z.; Heineman, George T.

Decentralized workflow management systems (WFMSs) provide an architecture for multiple, heterogeneous WFMSs to interoperate. Atomicity is a standard correctness model for guaranteeing that a set of operations occurs as an atomic unit, or none of them occur at all. Within a single WFMS, atomicity is the concern of its transaction manager. In a decentralized environment, however, the autonomous transaction managers must find ways to cooperate if an atomic unit is split between multiple WFMSs. This paper describes a flexible atomicity model that enables workflow administrators to specify the scope of multi-site atomicity based upon the desired semantics of multi-site tasks in the decentralized WFMS.