XFlow: an Xml-Based Document-Centric Workflow

This paper aims at investigating on an appropriate framework that allows the definition of workflows for collaborative document procedures. In this framework, called XFlow and largely based on XSLT Processing Model, the workflows are described by means of a new XML application called XFlowML (XFlow Markup Language). XFlowML describes the document workflow using an agent-based approach. Each agent can participate to the workflow with one or more roles, defined as XPath expressions, based on a hierarchical role chart. An XFlowML document contains as many templates as agent roles participating to the workflow. The document workflow engine constitutes the run-time execution support for the document processing by implementing the XFlowML constructs. A prototype of XFlow has been implemented with an extensive use of XML technologies (XSLT, XPath, XForms, SVG) and open-source tools (Cocoon, Tomcat, mySQL).