Introduction

The Marquée Workflow Automation Engine is an XML-RPC service that allows interfacing applications to model workflows containing sequences of calls to other XML-RPC services. As such, the emphasis in this stage of the project is on automation rather than workflow in the normal sense.

Background

Several observations have lead up to this project;

Firstly, a common problem in many businesses are the difficulties they have keeping their software synchronized with their evolving business procedures. Often, changes in procedures take a great deal of effort to incorporate into the software and requires several steps in the software life-cycle to be reiterated. The level of customization available in software today is often not sufficient to reflect changes in business procedures.

Secondly, the solutions available in the area of workflow automation are often large expensive products that rarely fit easily into small-scale to middle-scale applications. Further, they are often stand-alone products that do not integrate well with existing software.

What is the Marquée Workflow Automation Engine?

Through a simple XML-RPC API, applications can use the engine to create simple workflow packages that are executed on demand as a result of some application event. Any functionality expressable in an XML-RPC service is available to workflow modellers. The engine is not concerned with what occurs in each task of a workflow package, it just makes sure the tasks are executed in the sequence expressed in the package, and that the information flow through the services according to directions embedded by the modeller. This limited scope is intentional to ensure that the project is feasible.

The engine will use the Marquée XML-RPC Library for XML-RPC connectivity.

Modules

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