Dynamic and extensible exception handling for workflows : a service-oriented implementation

This paper presents the realisation, using a Service Oriented Architecture, of an approach for dynamic, flexible and extensible excep- tion handling in workflows, based not on proprietary frameworks, but on accepted ideas of how people actually work. The approach utilises an established framework for workflow flexibility called worklets and a de- tailed taxonomy of workflow exception patterns to provide an extensible repertoire of self-contained exception-handling processes which may be applied at the task, case or specification levels, and from which a dynamic runtime selection is made depending on the context of the exception and the particular work instance. Both expected and unexpected exceptions are catered for in real time, so that `manual handling' of the exception is avoided.