A Precondition-based Approach to Workflow Oriented Software Re-engineering

Feng Chen1, Da Tang2, Hongji Yang1 and Mohammed Alawairdhi3

  1. Software Technology Research Laboratory
    De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH, England
    {fengchen,hyang}@dmu.ac.uk
  2. College of Computer and Information Sciences
    Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia
    awairdhi@ccis.imamu.edu.sa

Abstract

Workflow management systems (WfMSs) become the basic technology for organisations to build their Information Systems. To understand the business processes already implemented in the existing software systems and then build the workflow oriented Information System is a time-consuming and error prone process. This paper proposes a unified software reengineering approach from a business process perspective. A workflow extraction method is developed to elicit the business processes from existing systems. A precondition-based workflow model is designed for this purpose, which is an activity-centred method for program analysis. The calculation of the activity’s whole condition provides powerful analysis techniques to verify the correctness of the recovered workflow model. Through the proposed approach, the workflow procedures can be recovered from the existing system and verified by the precondition analysis.

Key words

software re-engineering, workflow management, precondition-based workflow model, whole-condition of an activity

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS121021064C

Publication information

Volume 11, Issue 1 (January 2014)
Year of Publication: 2014
ISSN: 2406-1018 (Online)
Publisher: ComSIS Consortium

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How to cite

Chen, F., Tang, D., Yang, H., Alawairdhi, M.: A Precondition-based Approach to Workflow Oriented Software Re-engineering. Computer Science and Information Systems, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1-28. (2014), https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS121021064C