Continuation-passing enactment of distributed recoverable workflows

Abstract

Scalability, reliability and adaptability are among the key requirements for the enactment of distributed workflows. In addition, system resources should be efficiently utilized. Central workflow engines and static analysis of workflow specifications are some of the important obstacles to meeting these requirements. We propose a fully decentralized approach to workflow enactment that is not subject to these obstacles. In addition, it supports automatic recovery. The approach is of continuation-passing style, where continuations, or the reminder of the executions, are passed along with asynchronous messages for workflow enactment. Two continuations are associated to an execution: a success continuation and a failure continuation. Recovery plans for workflows are automatically generated at runtime and included in failure continuations. A prototype is implemented.