A workflow enactment model for next generation internet services

Providing workflow function is one of the most important research issues in the next generation Internet services such as Web Service and Grid Computing. Scalability for Internet scale services, reliability for unstable Internet resources, and management functions of workflow systems are the essential requirements in these environments. However, existing workflow enactment models for enterprises could not meet these requirements. This paper proposes the PeerFlow that is a P2P based workflow enactment model, to provide workflow functions for the next generation Internet services. To apply P2P model to the workflow enactment model, we introduce the concept of the instance buddy and the index data of workflow instances, then propose the principle architecture of the PeerFlow. The instance buddy enables the autonomous processing of peers, and it is used for recovery and monitoring functions. This paper also presents the recovery capabilities of PeerFlow with formal proofs for the reliability issues and a performance evaluation with SimPy, the Python simulation package.