A workflow language for context-aware services

Abstract

In the traditional computing environments such as business processes and distributed computing, workflows have well been adopted for service automation. These days, there are many studies that have tried to adopt workflows to ubiquitous computing. Such the workflow systems as uFlow and FollowMe use workflows to support context-aware services in ubiquitous computing environments. However the existing workflow systems have not yet offered a workflow language enough to support workflow's various functions. In this paper, we propose a new workflow language for context-aware workflow services in ubiquitous computing environments. The suggested language can specify context information on the transition constraints of a workflow, and support various workflow functions and adaptive services. In order to verify the efficiency of the suggested language, we designed a workflow scenario for context-aware services with the language, and demonstrated a process that provides users with autonomic services according to the scenario using the uFlow system. © 2007 IEEE.