Workflow model distribution or code distribution? ideal approach for service composition of the internet of things

Abstract

Emerging Internet of Things (IoT) system consists of heterogeneous physical devices that are interconnected via the Internet Protocol (IP) networks. In order to integrate the front-end physical things in the IoT management systems, Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) have gained attention as a viable option. However, enabling the participation of the resource constrained IoT devices in the business process execution raises the question, when considering the agility and energy conservation, whether the device should embed a standard workflow engine or it is better to execute a program representing the workflow. This paper aims to provide a guideline to developers by investigating the two business process workflow execution approaches for resource constrained IoT devices via the comparison of performance and resource usage. The experiments show the comprehensive comparison between the two approaches together with the discussion of the lessons learned.