YAWL
YAWL (Yet Another Workflow Language) is a Business Process Automation and Management System, based on a concise and powerful modelling language, that handles complex data transformations and full integration with organisational resources, external systems and Web Services. The formal foundation of the YAWL language makes its specifications unambiguous and allows for automated verification.
The YAWL system comprises an extensible set of YAWL Services in a Service-Oriented Architecture; some offer functionality to end users, some interact with other services and applications, and some do both. This architecture provides an environment that can easily be tuned to specific needs, and/or extended into new domains as required. Standard services include those that support resource handling, flexibility and exception handling, cost calculations, resource scheduling, document storage, digital document signing, email sending, inter-process communication and more. The system also supports automated form generation, particularly useful for rapid prototyping.
The first beta version of YAWL was developed in 2003, before becoming open-source in 2004. To date, there have been over 30 full releases, which have been downloaded over 250,000 times to 170 different countries. YAWL has been used in courses offered by tertiary institutions in over twenty countries, including the USA, China and across Europe and the Americas. YAWL has also been used in commercial settings, in organisational environments as diverse as healthcare, insurance, utility supply, telecoms, film production and personnel management.
