International Business Machines Corporation

Fang-Yi Wang

Alan Tsu-I Yaung

Kenneth Carlin Nelson

Rupa Bhaghavan

Wayne Frederick Miller

Sharon McKenna Sanders

Various embodiments of a method, apparatus and article of manufacture provide a decision point in a workflow system comprising a server and at least a first client work node. A decision point work node is provided at the server. A SQL expression which is associated with the decision point work node and the first client work node is generated. The server determines whether to route a work package to the first client work node based on the SQL expression.

Use of generated SQL for evaluation of decision point rules in a workflow system

An object-oriented framework is provided for managing the definition of user-defined attributes for workflow entities and storing and retrieving the values of those attributes. A set of APIs are introduced to manage the creation, deletion, and retrieval of user specified attribute definitions. In addition, extension objects are introduced to accommodate the storing and retrieving of values of user-defined attributes. This mechanism for allowing a user to extend the attributes of workflow entities enables customization of a workflow system to particular applications.

Content management system and method of employing extensible workflow entities with user-defined attributes in an object-oriented framework

An object-oriented framework for document routing service in a content management system directly provides the server API set for document routing to the application programmers, without an intermediate interface layer. This framework provides document routing functions and system administration support for document routing. In addition, the system defines the document routing process as a series of steps provided by an administrator through which a document is routed, where a work node is a step within the process. A work list is provided that is a filter of one or more work nodes; a user may obtain a list of work or the 'next' work item from the work list. Work packages can be suspended pending the satisfaction of criteria such as delay time or collection of a specified group of documents. The process can be resumed at any time. Suspension and resumption of the process are defined by the resume list in the work package and the work node. The object-oriented framework defines the object model of the document routing service that includes a set of classes and associated methods to support the model.

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Fang-Yi Wang