A Comparative Study and Algorithmic Analysis of Workflow Decomposition in Distributed Systems

Workflow is an essential mechanism for the automation of processes in distributed transactional systems, including mobile distributed systems. The workflow modeling enables the composition of process activities along with respective conditions, data flow and control flow dependencies. The workflow partitioning methods are used to create sub-partitions by grouping processes on the basis of activities, data flow and control flow dependencies. Mobile distributed systems consisting of heterogeneous computing devices require optimal workflow decomposition. In general, the workflow partitioning is a NP-complete problem. This article presents a comparative study and detailed analysis of workflow decomposition techniques based on graphs, petri nets and topological methods. A complete taxonomy of the basic decomposition techniques is presented. A detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of these decomposition techniques are explained. The comparative analysis presented in this article provides an insight to inherent algorithmic complexities of respective decomposition approaches. The qualitative parametric analysis would help in determining the suitability of workflow applicability in different computing environments involving static and dynamic nodes. Furthermore, the authors have presented a novel framework for workflow decomposition based on multiple parametric parameters for mobile distributed systems.