Business solutions, the ones typically developed with GeneXus, involve the definition of these processes and their implementation. For defining these processes there is a wide range of solutions, usually "disconnected" from their implementation or that end up generating a "framework" of the solution, which has to be programmed later with other tools.
The implementation of these processes is usually developed in an "embedded" manner in the specific features of the solution. That is to say, the process itself is combined with the business rules; in this way an object (or group of objects) not only provides a specific feature, but it also implements the process flow and its relationship with other tasks or features.
For the past few years, the trend has been to separate that process knowledge from the business rules so that they can be defined and implemented in an independent, albeit integrated, manner.
This is where the Workflow technologies are introduced. In the case of GeneXus clients, Artech has a product called
GXflow that enables them to define the processes (GX Process Modeler) and integrate them into the Knowledge Base itself. In addition, it provides a Workflow engine that makes it possible to manage the workflow independently from the specific features/tasks of the business.
Including this technology in a solution implies that we have to know it, extrapolate the processes that many times are intertwined with the specific logic, and so on.