The process has already been introduced in the first phase and provided relevant data to be used in the second phase. A complete description of both applications is given in the previous chapter. The main interest of the selected application fields lies in their nature to exhibit a representative set of requirements and constraints that large-scale process sensitive systems must fulfil today if they ever want to be helpful. The process is not necessarily monolithic, but can be composed of numerous process fragments, each one running in a remote site and has to inter-operate with the others. The issue becomes more critical when it comes to manage the mobility of the participants, enabled today by the emergence of new technologies like the world-wide web, and laptops high capabilities.
Tools are neither homogeneous nor all proprietary.
Based on these requirements, the PIE project intends to provide a framework for supporting the functionalities hinted above. New concepts and formalisms will be developed, refined and experimented. All these items will be compiled into project deliverables. A platform, which will support the PIE approaches for process evolution. Its goal is to provide a software environment to support the definition, execution, monitoring, and dynamic modification of ongoing processes.