AXART: enabling collaborative work with AXML artifacts

The workflow models have been essentially operation-centric for many years, ignoring almost completely the data aspects. Recently, a new paradigm of data-centric workflows, called business artifacts, has been introduced by Nigam and Caswell. We follow this approach and propose a model where artifacts are XML documents that evolve in time due to interactions with their environment, i.e. human users or Web services. This paper proposes the AXART system as a distributed platform for collaborative work that harnesses the power of our model. We will illustrate AXART with an example taken from the movie industry. Indeed, applying for a role in a film is a typical collaborative process that involves various participants, inside and outside the film company. The demonstration scenario considers both standard workflow process and dynamic workflow modifications, based on two extension mechanisms: workflow specialization and workflow exception. The workflows, modeled using artifacts, are supported by the AXART system by combining techniques specific to active documents, like view maintenance, with security techniques to manage access rights.