Supporting Dynamic Change in B2B Coordination

B2B applications require coordination of distributed services according to specific workflow policies. A major challenge with B2B applications is implementing a dynamic change to an active workflow policy. When dynamically changing a policy, active workflow instances that are in progress must be transitioned to the new policy in a dependable manner. To avoid undesirable side effects of the change, many business organizations find it necessary to abort active workflow instances prior to changing a workflow policy. This is an inefficient and ineffective change process. This paper presents the SWAP agent-based architecture that supports dynamic changes in B2B workflow policies. A major feature of SWAP is the ability to preserve safety and correctness properties while transitioning in-progress workflow instances to a new policy without the need to abort in-progress instances.