Yawl (computer science)

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Yawl is the name of a process modeling language and at the same time an acronym that means Yet Another Workflow Language. Portions of the Yawl software framework were published under the Apache Software License (ASL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License . Yawl is therefore an open source product. The Yawl software framework can be classified as a workflow management system (WfMS).

The Yawl software framework consists of a workflow environment (the Yawl engine ), a worklist component, a web service invoker and an SMS invoker component that allows business processes or subtasks to be initiated via SMS. The Yawl software framework also contains an XForms component that enables HTML-based work lists to be generated automatically.

Contrary to the common business description languages such as BPML , XPDL or BPEL , the attempt was made with YAWL to support all workflow patterns that have been specified by the workflow pattern initiative to date. This approach makes Yawl a very expressive process description language.

Process notation

At first glance yawl similar to the notation, the UML - activity diagrams or proposed by the BPMI Business Process Modeling Notation . However, the Yawl authors point out that the visual representation of a Yawl graph is primarily based on the mathematical foundations of Petri nets . To put it precisely, a Yawl graph represents an extension of the Petri nets, which has been specially adapted to the domain of workflow management . In particular, the formally verifiable properties of Petri nets, which other diagram techniques usually lack, should be used here in order to be able to define verifiably correct processes. In order to better understand the facts, please refer to the following illustration. It illustrates the process that was necessary to create this article.

  • Process definition (Yawl)

  • Process definition (BPMN)

  • Process definition (UML)

See also

Web links