Syrup是一个自适应的工作流系统,它不同其它工作流解决方案没有遵循复杂的标准如Wf- XML,BPML和XPDL。Syrup可以用来描述作业,程序步骤,资料导入/导出需求和作为描述每个商业流程步骤的工具。为了能达到这些需求，Syrup提供了五种基础概念 Tasks（作业）, Links(链接), Workflows(工作流), Workers（工作者）和WorkSpace(工作环境).
Syrup is an adaptive Workflow system with a difference. Like any other Workflow solution, Syrup can be used to describe the tasks, procedural steps, required input and output information and tools needed for each step in a business process [1]. To be able to do this, Syrup provides five basic concepts: Tasks, Links, Workflows, Workers and the WorkSpace. Additionally, the minimal core is build in such a way that integrating Syrup into an existing infrastructure poses a minimal challenge to developers.
Syrup can overcome the von Neumann bottleneck that stops traditional software systems from scaling [2]. It does this by strictly separating the specification, identification and execution phase of Workflows in a distributed setup. Although the phases are explicitly separated, this doesn’t mean that each phase can’t be expressed in terms of one another. For example, Workflows can be dynamically compiled by other Workflows in Syrup. This Lisp- like flexibility gives developers a chance to maximize concurrency and the distribution of Workflows even further [3].
Note that Syrup doesn’t follow the more complex standards such as Wf-XML, BPML and XPDL [4]. Instead it provides the basic building blocks to implement any of the standards - and hopefully more.
