A Grammatical Approach for Administrative Workflow Design and their Distributed Execution Using Structured and Cooperatively Edited Mobile Artifacts

With the advent of the artifact-centric paradigm, the search for completely decentralized and less complex process execution techniques is regaining interest after the mitigated success of earlier techniques and the considerable reduction of research work in this area between 2006 and 2017. This paper presents a new framework for the completely decentralized management of business processes. The said framework uses an artifact-centric model based on tree-like structures for process specification with emphasis on actors’ views and with scenario as modelling unit. The framework’s execution model is based on the cooperative editing of mobile artifacts. In addition, a prototype system for proof of concepts is provided. As a result, the proposed framework is based on a solid mathematical foundation, designed using topical concepts, and offers a unique formalism for the executable specification of business processes.