Software Integration Framework To Support Workflow Management Research And Applications

With the widespread use of the Web technology, many enterprises hope urgently to construct their own Web business systems. J2EE ( Java 2 Enterprise Edition ) is a standard platform provided by Sun corporation, which supplies us with rich technical choices to develop Web-based enterprise application. However, the traditional J2EE framework whose core point is EJB appears cumber to most of SEM's ( Small and Media Enterprises ) web application and inducts certain unnecessary complexity. In addition, EJB's O/R mapping solution-Entity Bean has been proved an unsuccessful technology. A high-quality application depends on the support of well-designed J2EE infrastructure. Therefore, how to use J2EE's core technologies to design and construct a robust, scalable and reusable infrastructure of Web application remains to be a challenge we must face. With the popularity of workflow, many enterprises would like to integrate the workflow into web application system. At present, Web application can rarely support the workflow and was restricted largely by external application, because there is no uniform standard in the ways of integration. Therefore, we need to establish a good"Adhesive Layer"between Web application and workflow. For the best, it is a standard framework which is independent from different enterprises'application.MVC ( Model-View-Controller) as a well-known user interface design pattern was brought up with the development of Smalltalk. MVC pattern, as one of the design patterns provides a layered structure for the development of application system, including view, controller and model. With the appearance of the J2EE, MVC is used more widely in the development of web application. MVC pattern not only realizes the separation of function block and display block, but also enhances the maintenances, expansibility and transportability of the application system. Among the concrete application frameworks of MVC pattern, Apache Struts framework based on the J2EE platform, is a typical framework to implement the MVC pattern. Controller is constituted by Action Servlet and Action. A series of labels constitute View. Struts separates interface design and Service Logic, thus it helps the work division between webpage designer and programmer, and enhances the reusability and flexibility of the code, and makes modular development easier. But Struts framework lacks the support to the model, needing the developers themselves to define the implement of the model. Spring framework is an Open Source Engineering which started from February 2003, it mainly rooted in the book written by Rod Johnson. In this book, Rod Johnson advocated the design idea of J2EE practicality, and provided a primary development framework implement. Spring framework takes the Bean Factory as the core, and it provides IoC (Inversion of Control) container and AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) support to fetch up some shortcomings of the former web application frameworks. LouShang framework of LangChao Corporation integrates the Struts framework and Spring framework and then form a new web application framework. This framework possesses not only flexible View and Controller of Struts but also IoC and AOP of Spring, so it can increase the potential for business layer reusing and its extension greatly. But the following is the increase of the quantity of system code, and LouShang framework lacks the support to the workflow and Multi-System Integration.This paper improves the LouShang framework and then forms a software integrated framework of supporting workflow after studying frameworks of Struts, Spring and LouShang thoroughly. The framework is more advantages in the support of designing workflow and the capabilities of application integration. The main work and innovations lie in:1. We discover that many interface elements are alike based on analysis to the interface of workflow management system, and then develop a set of web components which support to the workflow system. The web components is based on the interface elements of workflow manage system, supports to the view layer of workflow and provides rich form.2. A code-machine based-on LouShang framework was designed through studying the layered structure of LouShang framework. With the structure of table as the core, the code-machine can generate most code of visiting database. The code-machine can generate the code of all layer and the code has a detailed explanation. So, code-machine not only increases the automation of LouShang framework, and also conducives to learning programming for me.3. For resolving the problem of Multi-System Integration, LouShang framework's persistence layer was re-designed and the persistence layer's code was generated by code-machine, which can provide the support of bottom to develop the workflow system. We strengthen the persistence layer and improve the reusability of LouShang framework. Finally, a bank consumer credit system based on the research mentioned above was implemented, and the system was adopted by the bank. This system achieves desired goal and has a good effect. This paper designs the bank consumer credit system in detail, and also provides the concrete development process of feedback module.In practice, the improved web application framework as this paper mentioned, can effectively improve the software development process based on the workflow manage and significantly improve the efficiency and automation of development of web system.