An adaptable workflow system architecture on the Internet for electronic commerce applications

An electronic commerce (EC) process is a business process and defining it as a workflow provides all the advantages that come with this technology. Yet electronic commerce processes place certain demands on the workflow technology like the distribution of the load of the workflow engine to multiple servers, dynamic modification of workflows for adaptability, openness and availability. We propose a workflow system architecture to address these issues. The componentwise architecture of the system makes it possible to incorporate the functionality and thus the complexity only when it is actually needed. The infrastructure of the system is based on CORBA 2.0 where methods are invoked through XML. The clients of the system are coded as network transportable applets written in Java so that the end user can activate workflow components through the workflow domain manager over the network. The system provides high availability by replicating the component server repository and the workflow domain manager. We also discuss how this architecture can be used in building an electronic marketplace.