WdCM: a workday calendar model for workflows in service grid environments

The time model for business cooperation across organizations and in business service grid has a special and important requirement, i.e. workday calendar model (WdCM). Workflow plays an important role in modelling business processes across multi-enterprises or in service grid environments. However, current research in workflow time models does not pay sufficient attention to the differences in workday calendar between individual organizations. This paper aims to solve this problem by clarifying some basic concepts involved in the workday calendar models and presenting an XML-based framework for workday calendar expressions, i.e. WdCM. Based on this WdCM, temporal constraints and the time optimization issue of workflow processes are investigated. Finally, a case study is analysed to demonstrate the feasibility of our workday calendar model