Execution state persistence for workflow application

[Paolo Losi]

Hi all,
	I'm pretty new to the python language so please excuse me
if this is FAQ... I'm very glad to be part of the list! :-)

I'm looking into a way to implement a generic workflow framework with python.
The basic idea is to use python scripts as the way to specify workflow
behavior. The framework should not only use scripts as a specification language
but is going to leverage on python interpreter for the execution of the
scripts.
One of the possible solution is to have a one to one mapping
between a interpreter process and a workflow instance.

Since I want to be able to model also long running processes I need to
cope with Execution state persistence. In other words..
I'd like to stop the framework and restart it having all workflow
instance processes resume exactly where they left.

Ideally I would be nice to have dumpexec() e loadexec() builtin functions
to dump and reload the state of the interpreter. I've not seen anything
like that unfortunately...

I've tried to look at exec statement but it doesn't seem to be good
for execution persistence...

Questions are:

- does there exist a python framework for workflow that use
   python script as a specification language and that
   support "long running" workflows? I don't want to reinvent the wheel...

- does the implementation idea quickly depicted makes sense to you?

- how do you suggest to implement execution persistence? Is there
   any "standard" solution?

Thanks!!!

	Paolo