The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science


PhD Qualifying examination


"A survey on temporal and speed-up aspects of workflow management systems
(WFMS)"


By Miss Eleana Kafeza


Abstract

The need for explicit time management in workflow environments has been
recently identified. Although the concept of time is inherent in workflow
applications, time management until now has been treated by the same
general-purpose structures of the workflow system. This traditional
approach does not allow for explicitly specifying timing correctness
requirements, temporal consistency checking, immediate control over the
diverse set of time constraints that workflow applications exhibit and
timely monitoring of the environment. Moreover, new application domains
like e-commerce workflow applications require from Workflow Management
System the capability of reacting to on-line user request for
acceleration of their instances. In our work, we extend the existing
workflow specification based on the requirements posed by real-life
applications such as health systems. We argue that time management should
be an integral part of the workflow management system and not performed by
a general-purpose temporal reasoner. We incorporate a subset of interval
algebra that allows for efficient consistency checking, while providing
expressiveness of temporal constraints and examine different scheduling
techniques. We also look into existing scheduling methods and identify the
required additional functionality in order to support speed-up requests.


Date:			Thursday, 24 August 2000

Time:			10:00a.m.- 12:00 noon
	
Venue:			Room 1402
			Lifts 25-26

Chairman:		Dr. Cunsheng Ding

Committee Members:	Dr. Kamalakar Karlapalem (Supervisor)
			Prof. Frederick Lochovsky
			Dr. Mounir Hamdi 
			Dr. Shing-Chi Cheung



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