Decentralized workflow management: Architecture and components

This contribution describes the need for decentralized and autonomous Workf low Management Systems (WfMS) and current technologies for their realizatio n. An own, DCE (Distributed Computing Environment) based approach is presen ted and crucial architecture and design decisions are outlined. A column of difficulties exist independent from the selected distributed platform, e.g . how to get initial object references, how to fill the semantic gap betwee n service offers and service requests, how to get acceptable performance va lues and how to fulfill security requirements. CodAlf, our WfMS on top of D CE and DC++ exploits performance and security advantages of its open platfo rm, and integrates an advanced type management concept to meet some of thes e crucial requirements.