US Patent:
20020152102, Oct 17, 2002
Inventors:
Karen Brodersen - Redwood City CA, US
Michael Yu - San Jose CA, US
Jai-Jein Yu - Fremont CA, US
Andrzej Mazur - San Jose CA, US
Brian Groves - San Francisco CA, US
International Classification:
G06F017/60
Abstract:
System and method for preparing, using, and displaying a state model of a process, as an industrial or business process, as a sequence of discrete steps. The state model defines the behavior of the logical objects making up a process model of the process as (1) a set of permitted states and (2) a set of permitted transitions between the permitted states. The state model is created by selecting a template for the state model, and selecting industrial or business object components for the state model (for example, by using “OOP” methods or other programming paradigms). The user then selects or defines state transitions for the state model, for example, by defining permitted state transitions from a “from state” to a “to state”. The defined or selected state transition rules are identified to State Transition Rule names. That is, state transitions are associated to specific state transition rules, names, and conditions, and the state transition names and state transition rule names are enumerated. The specific state transition rules corresponding to the names are extracted from a database. The extracted states, transitions, and rules define the state machine execution engine. This state machine execution engine is used to process business models.