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YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language)

YAWL is a BPM/Workflow system, based on a concise and powerful modelling language, that handles complex data transformations, and full integration with organizational resources and external Web Services.

Major Features

YAWL offers these distinctive features:

  • the most powerful process specification language for capturing control-flow dependencies and resourcing requirements.
  • native data handling using XML Schema, XPath and XQuery.
  • a formal foundation that makes its specifications unambiguous and allows automated verification.
  • a service-oriented architecture that provides an environment that can easily be tuned to specific needs.
  • YAWL has been developed independent from any commercial interests. It simply aims to be the most powerful language for process specification.
  • For its expressiveness, YAWL offers relatively few constructs (compare this e.g. to BPMN!).
  • YAWL offers unique support for exception handling, both those that were and those that were not anticipated at design time.
  • YAWL offers unique support for dynamic workflow through the Worklets approach. Workflows can thus evolve over time to meet new and changing requirements.
  • YAWL aims to be straightforward to deploy. It offers a number of automatic installers and an intuitive graphical design environment.
  • YAWL's architecture is Service-oriented and hence one can replace existing components with one's own or extend the environment with newly developed components.
  • The YAWL environments supports the automated generation of forms. This is particularly useful for rapid prototyping purposes.
  • Tasks in YAWL can be mapped to human participants, Web Services, external applications or to Java classes.
  • Through the C-YAWL approach a theory has been developed for the configuration of YAWL models. For more information on process configuration visit [www.processconfiguration.com]
  • Simulation support is offered through a link with the ProM environment. Through this environment it is also possible to conduct post-execution analysis of YAWL processes (e.g. in order to identify bottlenecks).

Other Features

  • new: completely rewritten Process Editor
  • new: Auto Update + Install/Uninstall of selected components
  • delayed case starting
  • support for passing files as data
  • support for non-human resources
  • support for interprocess communication
  • calendar service and scheduling capabilities
  • task documentation facility
  • revised logging format and exporting to OpenXES
  • integration with external applications
  • custom forms
  • sophisticated verification support
  • Web service communication
  • Highly configurable and extensible