Dealing with logical Failures for Collaborating Workflows Etzion

Abstract. Logical failures occurring during workflow execution require the dynamic adaptation of affected workflows. The consequences such a dynamic adaptation may have for collaborating workflows have not yet been investigated sufficiently. We propose a rule-based approach for dynamic workflow adaptation to deal with logical failures. In our approach, workflow collaboration is based on agreements specifying the delivery time and quality of objects a workflow expects from its collaboration partners. Our mechanisms decide which collaborating workflows have to be in-formed when a dynamic adaptation is performed. In particular, we estimate the tem-poral and qualitative implications a dynamic adaptation has for collaboration part-ners. Because of the automated handling of logical failures, we expect that our ap-proach significantly improves the robustness and correctness of collaborating workflows. The approach has been developed in the context of collaborative work-flow-based care for cancer patients.