Technical Integration Challenges in Challenges for Workflow Management:

While system workflows are well equipped to support the process aspect of
enterprise application integration scenarios, the same technical integration
problems need to be solved in system workflow projects as those in traditional
enterprise application integration projects.
Application systems that need to be integrated are typically not equipped
with well-documented interfaces that can be used to get hold of the required
functionality. Functionality of application systems might also be implemented
in the graphical user interfaces, so that low-level implementation work is required
to access the application system functionality.
Another important source of trouble is relationships between different applications
at the code level. Direct invocation between software systems is an
example of these relationships, so that an invocation of an application system
automatically spawns off an invocation of another application system. In
these settings, the overall process flow is in part realized at the application
code level, so that the workflow management system is capable of controlling
only parts of the actual process flow, but not the complete process.
The granularity of the workflow activities and the granularity of the functionality
provided by the underlying application systems might be different.
Fine-granular business activities might have been designed in the process
model that cannot be realized, because the underlying application system
only provides coarse-grained functionality. In some cases, the interface to the
application can be modified so that fine-grained functionality is available.
This alternative is likely to incur considerable cost, or it might be impossible
for some applications. Another alternative is changing the granularity of
the business activities. In this case, certain properties of the process might
not be realizable�for instance, the concurrent execution of two fine-granular
activities. As a result, the run time of the workflow will not be optimal.
Service-oriented architectures and service-enabling of legacy applications
are important concepts currently being investigated to address these technical
problems.