DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING UML AND C++

Abstract

Abstract In modern world all computational and information technology is striving to become more human centric and ergonomic. The complete process of information management is more than a pure transfer of information, it involves interaction with human beings where the latter may modify, modulate or control its flow. This is the concept behind a workflow management system. The information is essentially a workitem, which is acted upon by participants in the workflow. These participants may be humans or automated computer procedures. The WorkFlow Management System (WFMS) also provides process definition framework that models the flow of work in an organization and its instantiation. In the current work, the aim is to develop and implement a workflow management system. WFMS are a relatively new concept and it is intended to use open source software to implement a typical infrastructure. This thesis analyses the workflow in a typical engineering college and develops the models required in UML. These developed models in UML and the activity diagrams provide a starting point as a workflow definition in WFMS. This work used the computing infrastructure on a host system running open source Linux (Fedora Core 3) and java based open source workflow engine OpenWFE. The proposed framework is extensible and provides facility to implement more rigorous workflow solutions based on the departmental / user needs. iv