A simulation system in a work flow control system confirms whether or not prepared business process defining information is valid. The simulation system receives as an input thereto a false case including a name of a document, an attribute name belonging to the document, and attribute values to be selected; virtually moves the false case from a node to another node according to the business process defining information, simulates a process conducted in each node, and generates a journal of these processes.

The present invention relates to a device within and a method processed by a Workflow Management System (WFMS) making resources/objects accessible to activities of said WFMS processing these resources/objects. The Workflow-Management-System (WFMS) according the current invention comprises a WFMS-server said WFMS-server performs navigation through a process-model and performs resolution by selecting a next-process-activity to be executed by said WFMS, and by selecting a WFMS-agent to execute said next-process-activity. The current invention teaches a stager storing, after the WFMS performing said resolution, resources required for execution of said next-process-activity from one or a multitude of source-locations onto a WMF-staging-location. Afterwards the WFMS-agent uses said resources from said WFMS-staging-location for execution of said next-process-activity.

The present invention relates to the field of integration of applications that are executed by computer systems. In an additional focus, the current invention improves the integration of applications within workflow management systems. The basic approach of the invention to this problem are the features of input container materialization programs and output container dematerialization programs. The materialization programs are executed for an input container before the input container is passed to a process activity. The purpose of the materialization programs is to perform materialization of the input container by retrieving its data members' contents from arbitrary storage areas and/or by manipulating the data-member's contents. The de-materialization programs are executed after a process activity completed execution, and their purpose is to perform de-materialization of the output container by manipulating its data-members' contents and/or storing its data members' contents to arbitrary storage areas.

In correspondence to an application, a resource table to manage computing resources which are available for the application is provided in a rule such that a plurality of applications can mutually use distributed computing resources which could be used so far by itself and can effectively use many distributed computing resources and an execution performance can be raised. When a certain application executes a cooperative processing together with another application, resource tables are copied and a new resource table for managing resources of both of them is formed. By referring to a newly formed resource table by each application, each application can use both of the computing resources more efficiently.

Method for automatically generating an implementation of input and output container reusable parts for a process model managed and executed by at least one computer system. The method of generating uses the specification of a process model extended by specifications associating the process model to a reusable part environment outside the workflow process environment and generates an implementation of said input and output containers as reusable parts residing within said reusable parts environment. The method of generating comprises an analysis of the specifications of said process model. Based on this analysis the method generates the associated input container reusable parts and associated output container reusable parts as implementations of said input and output containers.