Data management externalization for workflow definition and execution

A system for externalizing data comprising:

• a database and application program interface generator which:
• generates a relational database from a data model of a domain specification, the data model including a set of business objects linked by data relations, at least some of the business objects in the data model being linked to a domain-specific activity type by a business object relation, the relational database storing a collection of reusable business objects and their business object relations, and
• generates a platform-independent application program interface for accessing the data model, the application program interface updating and saving data to the relational database and fetching data from the relational database;
• a process specification component which provides for a user to generate a domain-specific process model with links to business objects in the domain specification, including, with a graphical user interface generator, generating a graphical representation of the process model using graphical description templates for representing process steps in the graphical representation, for display to the user on a graphical user interface;
• a domain-independent generator for transforming the domain-specific process model to a domain-independent process model which has access to the database through the application program interface;
• and
• at least one processor for implementing the database and application program interface generator, process specification component, and generator for transforming the domain-specific process model to the domain-independent process model.

A method for externalizing data comprising:

• instantiating a domain specification as an instance of a domain meta-model, the domain specification including a set of business objects;
• instantiating a domain-specific process model as an instance of a process meta-model;
• extracting a reusable data model from the domain specification, the data model including the set of business objects linked by data relations, at least some of the business objects in the data model being linked to a domain-specific activity type by a respective one of a set of defined business object relations;
• generating a platform-independent application program interface;
• generating a relational database from the data model which is accessible through the application program interface, the relational database storing a collection of reusable business objects and business object relations;
• generating a domain-independent process model from the domain-specific process model and the domain specification, the domain-independent process model being an instance of a domain-independent process meta-model, the domain-independent process model having access to the database through the application program interface, the generating including, with a graphical user interface generator, generating a graphical representation of the process model using graphical description templates for representing process steps in the graphical representation, for display to the user on a graphical user interface;
• and
• executing a process with the domain-independent process model, including generating one or more calls to the application program interface to perform functions with respect to business objects in the database.