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Abstract
Workflow management systems have attracted a great deal of attention
due to their ability to integrate heterogeneous, distributed applications into
coherent business processing environments. In spite of their limitations,
existing products are enjoying a considerable success but it would be a
mistake not to try to see beyond current systems
and applications. In today's computer environments, the trend towards using
many small computers instead of a few big ones has revived the old dream
of distributed computing. There is, however, a significant lack of tools for
implementing, operating and maintaining such systems. In particular,
there are no good programming paradigms for parallel architectures in
which the basic building blocks are stand alone systems. Workflow
management provides this key functionality, suggesting its potential as
crucial component of any distributed environment. This chapter describes in
detail such functionality and provides some insight on how it can be
applied in environments other than business processing.
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