Offline execution in workflow-enabled Web applications

Abstract

Today, more and more organizations prefer Web applications to perform their business processes, because these allow collaborative work between several users. However, many tasks must be done while being offline. This goes against today's Web architecture, where a remote server must be contacted for each performed operation. We propose a methodology to develop functionalities that can be executed offline within workflow-enabled Web applications. With these functionalities a user will be able to retrieve his pending work from the server, go offline, perform his activities in the browser and, when he gets back online, synchronize his work with the server, continuing the workflow. The development of such functionalities will take advantage of the organization-specific workflow definitions to manage the application state.