Gathering unstructured workflow data into relational database model using process definition language

Authors:
Amir Pourabdollah;Michael Hartley
Affiliations:
School of Computer Science and IT, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom;School of Computer Science and IT, The University of Nottingham, Jalan Broga, Semenyih, Selangor D. E., Malaysia
Venue:
DBA'06 Proceedings of the 24th IASTED international conference on Database and applications
Year:
2006

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Abstract

This paper introduces a new method for gathering unstructured workflow definition data in order to model it in relational databases. In addition to introducing an open database model, a solution has been developed to facilitate the process of defining the workflow data for process designers. This solution consists of the Process Definition Language (PDL), pre-processing of unstructured workflow definition to be converted to PDL, and an interpreter to convert PDL lines to SQL statements. This solution is able to fill the basic database tables in order to drive a general workflow management system (WFMS). PDL is very close to natural language in order to be used by non-IT people, but structured enough to be interpreted.