GENERAL-PURPOSE WORK FLOW LANGUAGES

Work flow management requires language support for work flow specifica tion and task specification. Many approaches and systems for work flow management therefore offer at least one new language for work flow sp ecification; task specification is usually done in a traditional langu age. This is motivated in particular by the fact that many components already exist and the task of the work flow tool is the specification of the interaction between these components. The intention of this art icle is to demonstrate that a general purpose programming language can serve both aspects. We do not really see the need to develop yet anot her language that a user or application programmer must learn. If an e xisting programming language like C or Prolog is extended towards work flow capabilities, it is easy to reuse autonomous existing software c omponents and to build interfaces among them.