Design And Implementation Of Workflow Integrated With Rule Engine On SaaS Platform

Growing market competition increased the cost of human resources,which later evoked demands for improvements of internal management efficiency. The concept of "intemet+" and development of cloud computing technology enabled SaaS services to be the major strength of informazation of traditional industries. Workflow, as the foundation of office routing process, is widely applied in production. On the other hand,traditional workflow technology, which included logic of process and business within itself, gradually fails to satisfy complicated flow demands.To improve the workflow's ability to serve various industries and their continuously changing rules, the research proposed a practical solution: the workflow that is integrated with rule engine. After analyzing workflow modeling approach and the theory of rule engine,the research aimed to separate workflow rules and workflow transition and then make them driven by each other. Workflow model based on object-rule was then conducted. Next, user demands and usage scenarios were analyzed by SaaS theory, after which rule engine was constructed with current SaaS platforms. A workflow management system integrated with rule-engine was then created in terms of data layer, interface layer, and application layer.Then, web graphical workflow designer enabled users to easily create and edit workflows while designing and updating process and rules at the same time. A typical business process was chosen to validate the practicability of this research.