Long running application models and co-operating monitors

Abstract: Business processes representing related interactions within a business organization as well as e-commerce interactions across multiple independent autonomous organizations span days and weeks in time. The software which supports or automates the activities of singl business is best modeled as set of long running applications which interact repeatedly with the outside world. The execution of these long running applications needs to be managed and monitored because of their business value. The monitoring framework must deal with all the different requirements on long running applications: (i) multiple interactions with each autonomous business partner driv n by contractual agreements, (ii) execution of multiple application steps in response to an business event (request or response from an busin ss entity, pre-scheduled action or time-out, etc.), (iii) interaction with a specific business role (internal or external) to perform some application steps, (iv) support for extended transactional semantics (e.g., compensation framework) to accommodate activities that are long running and/or across independent business entities, and (v) finally, development and execution framework for ease of programming of business applications. Legacy application monitors (e.g., Workflow, Extended transaction monitor, Conversation monitor) are designed to satisfy specific subset of these requirements. We argue that while proposed as well as legacy long running application monitors satisfy some of these objectives, no single monitor currently supports all of these objectives. This paper discusses a design approach which could lead to a unified monitor and also shows how in the absence of a unified monitor, long running business applications can be effectively modeled and built using multiple co-operating monitors. 1